


Aiming for Somewhere Central

by neverfaraway



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Brexit, Drug Use, Fergus Williams/OMC, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 77,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: A fledgling tabloid journalist and a communications student walk into a bar.Twenty years later, Fergus loses an election and the electorate loses its marbles. Adam, who ought to have been able to fix things, doesn't bother.
Relationships: Adam Kenyon/Fergus Williams
Comments: 69
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warnings:**
> 
> This story deals, in part, with the long-term illness and death of a character’s elderly parent. Chapter 12 deals with the character’s reactions to this and their grieving process. I feel like I also need to warn for Adam and Fergus’ appalling misogyny, but if you’re not expecting them to be terrible human beings, you were probably watching a different show.
> 
> In October, I wrote a one-shot about Adam’s poor life choices at the 2014 Home Office Christmas party. This is what happened when I couldn’t stop thinking about that story, and how he and Fergus reached that point, and what happened to them afterwards... because, let’s face it, it was never going to be a straightforward happily-ever-after for our two favourite emotionally stunted egomaniacs. 
> 
> Listen to the playlist for this story here: [Aiming for Somewhere Central - Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0UeDhEZ3oen1jpNImZo1iu?si=8EP-73NPRMaYOToPgqDSKQ).

_Some people hide their emotions_

_And some people show too much;_

_I’m aiming for somewhere central._

_Now, isn’t it obvious?_

‘Nosebleed’ - Maxïmo Park

**Sussex, 2002**

Deepest, darkest rural Sussex is not Adam’s idea of the perfect location for a wedding. For one thing, he hadn’t been able to get there by train, having instead to hire a car for the weekend. Secondly, his job means he’s only free on Saturday, because Sunday afternoon will be spent putting together the Monday morning edition and his team of sub-editors will need him there to shepherd them through it. This necessitates an hour and a half’s drive, each way, on piddling B-roads on which Adam is vastly under-qualified to drive, having passed his test in Andover city centre at the age of eighteen and immediately moved to the middle of Zone 2, where he hasn’t needed a car for the past eleven years. He’s just grateful none of his and Mark’s mutual London acquaintances have asked him for a lift.

He’s approaching the wedding with an attitude of mild disdain, in any case. Rashida, who has spent eight years vehemently voicing her opposition to the outdated patriarchal concept of matrimony, until Mark proposed to her at Glastonbury last year by getting down on one knee in the middle of Lost Vagueness, has decided that the best way to fight the system is to wear a large white dress and make she and Mark’s friends and family travel to the arse-end of the High Weald to watch them tie the knot inside an expensively decorated, inadequately heated barn conversion. Adam can think of better ways of spending his Saturday afternoon involving having his appendix removed without anaesthetic.

It doesn’t help that he’s been invited out of awkward obligation, rather than any genuine desire for his company on either Mark or Rashida’s part. Since they moved to Brighton, Adam can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they’ve seen one another. It ought not to be obligatory to invite one’s erstwhile drinking and drug-taking companions to an occasion none of them have the slightest interest in attending. Not that Adam can complain too extensively; he could have said no.

He’s spent half an hour driving around the Sussex countryside, increasingly convinced the barn doesn’t even fucking exist, and the whole wedding has been fabricated by Mark as part of a elaborate conspiracy to humiliate him, when he turns left instead of right at the end of a lane he’s already driven down twice and spots the tell-tale line of cars parked haphazardly in the verges surrounding a farm gate.

By the time he jogs down the track, goes back for the present he left on the back seat, and makes it to the barn, the rest of the guests are milling around the yard, sipping glasses of bucks fizz and chatting.

He spots Manc Eric above the heads of a posse of child cousins and raises his hand in greeting, then lets himself hang back to suss out the location of the toilets, having been needing a piss since he passed Tunbridge Wells.

Inside, the barn has been festooned with fabric; Adam imagines Rashida had wanted it to look bohemian and whimsical. He slips gratefully onto a bench at the back and takes stock of the crowd. Apart from Manc Eric, he spots a few other familiar faces; people he hasn’t seen for over half a decade, who all look well-off and overfed. He’s about to turn to peruse the bride’s side, when Pachelbel’s Canon is piped through speakers disguised as ornamental vases and the guests shuffle to their feet, casting expectant glances over their shoulders.

Mark, standing at the front in the company of a best man Adam recognises as one of his friends from school, whom Adam has met a couple of times on nights out, looks like he might very well need to be sick.

Two small girls, each bearing a basket of rose petals, proceed down the aisle, and then Rashida appears, gliding tearfully on the arm of a man Adam assumes must be her father. She does, objectively, look very beautiful.

The ceremony progresses as these things usually do, with trite readings from mawkish poems and a grim set of personalised vows. Adam finds himself idly scanning the guests again, wondering whether any of them are single and in the market for a very brief good time in the loos before he has to head back to London.

A floppy head of ginger hair, partially obscured by the wide-brimmed hat of a woman on the row in front of him, is what alerts him to the fact that Fergus is also there. The last time Adam saw him had been six years ago, at Mark’s unofficial graduation party. Remembering it with clarity is something of a challenge, given that Adam had spent the better part of the evening off his face, sucked off one of Rashida’s irritating art school friends in the upstairs bathroom, and then passed out in Mark’s spare bed. Unlike Eric, there’s no sign of Fergus having brought a partner. Adam suffers a premonition of exactly how the seating plan will have been arranged, to accommodate two people sad enough to turn up to a wedding without a plus one.

Sure enough, during the awkward milling around while Mark and Rashida are whisked away to be photographed, Adam takes himself off to peruse the table plan. He’s scanning for his name when someone clears their throat behind him.

“You’re next to me,” Fergus says, sounding apologetic. “Nice to see you again.”

“Is it?” says Adam.Fergus’ face falls and he shuffles awkwardly on the spot, clearly regretting this attempt to make conversation with the arsehole he’s been lumbered with for the duration of the wedding breakfast.

“Adam! Alright, posh lad?”

Manc Eric has lumbered into view, rescuing Adam from the need to apologise. Eric extends an arm and claps him on the shoulder, and Fergus hovers at the periphery, glancing at Eric in a way that suggests he isn’t sure whether he wants Eric to remember him, or not.

Eric catches sight of him and extends a hand, which Fergus shakes with a grimace. “Fergal, isn’t it?”

“Fergus.”

“Yeah, of course. Has he put us all on the same table?”

“Looks like,” says Adam. A three hour round trip is looking increasingly not to have been worth it.

Eric claps him on the shoulder again by way of taking his leave, and Adam glances at Fergus, catching him scowling at Eric’s retreating back.

“Fucking tosser.”

“Complete twat,” Adam agrees. Fergus meets his eye appraisingly and they share a sly smile.

Before Adam can extend an apology for his earlier rudeness - which normally he wouldn’t consider worth the bother, except he’s loathe to alienate the only other person he’s met so far whom he doesn’t detest on sight - other guests appear, shuffling him out of the way of the table plan and forcing him to beat a retreat in the direction of his seat.

If any confirmation were needed of Adam’s position on the invites list, the fact he’s at the furthest seat away from the top table, so far into the corner of the marquee he’s practically sitting in the catering tent, proves it. Fergus sits down next to him, flicking glances at the rest of the tables, as though he half expects to find someone he recognises. Adam wonders whether he’s so desperate to get out of his exile in the corner with the other lone weirdo that he’s plotting his escape.

“Know anyone else?” Fergus asks.

“Only Eric.”

The other people at their table are friends Mark made when he got his first job at BT. They introduce themselves with names Adam has absolutely no intention of remembering, and he decides it’s high time to crack open the wine that’s standing on the table. He’ll only be able to have a glass, two at most, what with the driving, but he isn’t sure he can bear the rest of the evening without the help of some kind of mind-altering substances. Attempting relatively clean living has left him out here, in the middle of fucking nowhere, without recourse to a line of coke to make the time pass less painfully.

“Thank Christ,” mutters Fergus, on his left, proffering his glass to be filled as soon as Adam’s got the bottle open.

Half a glass of warm chardonnay, some kind of soup and an unimaginative plate of chicken-and-prosciutto-with-sauce later, and Adam is making polite conversation with the girlfriend of someone Mark apparently worked with on last year’s Tory election campaign. He would quite happily, if the cutlery hadn’t already been whisked away, stick forks in his eyes.

The only entertainment, as far as he can ascertain, is provided by the fact that Fergus has been gulping wine with abandon since the starters arrived and has been holding forth for ten minutes to a captive audience on the subject of global warming.

“Well, no, that’s obviously fucking wrong, because the Clear Skies Initiative isn’t even worth the paper Bush shat it out on.”

He’s gesturing expansively at Mark’s work friend, wine glass loose in his grasp and Adam is about to interject with something ignorant and provocative, just to see what will happen, when he’s stymied by the sound of cutlery being rung against a glass. The best man hauls himself to his feet at the top table.

“Oh, fuck me, here we go,” mutters Fergus, not quite _sotto voce,_ earning himself a glare from the next table.

The speeches are appalling, but no more so than Adam has come to expect from this sort of do. At his cousin’s wedding the best man had been so drunk he’d wet himself, so at least Mark and Rashida are clearing that lowest of bars. Adam drifts, letting himself watch the reactions of the assembled friends and family, wondering whether all of them are harbouring thoughts as spiteful and mean-spirited as he is.

The best man is, thankfully, brief; Mark’s dad is obliquely racist, which has Fergus choking in horror into his wine glass.

“Well, could have been worse,” says Eric, when the top table has resumed its seats and there are bowls of something that might be pavlova being brought to the table by harassed-looking teenage waitresses.

“Yeah, he could have gone full bastard and quoted ‘Rivers of Blood’,” mutters Fergus. Adam nearly inhales his meringue.

Really, it could all be going much worse. Which is not to say it couldn’t also be going much better, it’s just that by the time the coffee appears, Adam has almost started to enjoy himself.

“What I’m saying,” Fergus argues, waving his coffee spoon at Eric’s frowning girlfriend, “is that that’s all bollocks, isn’t it?”

“Fuck off, mate,” Eric interjects.

“No, come on. It’s only Rothermere’s stupidity that’s left him not being able to say anything about Desmond being a fucking racist porn peddler - Adam, back me up - ”

Adam has just finished the second half of his chardonnay and has no idea what Fergus and Eric have been arguing about.

“Oh, I forgot we’ve got a denizen of the tabloids in our midst,” Eric says, smirking at Adam over his pint glass.

“Are we still on Desmond?” Personally, Adam’s wondering how Fergus can become so aerated about absolutely every topic that’s dangled in front of him. It’s like sharing a table with a jack russell that can’t stop snapping at the ankles of anyone foolish enough to walk past.

Mark’s-work-friend’s-wife leans forward to catch Adam’s eye. “They must all be the same, surely? I imagine they’re all at it, racism and sexism and the rest, but no one dares challenge them.”

“The newsroom isn’t known for being a democracy,” Adam concedes, warily. The last thing he needs is to hold forth about his boss and find out someone on the next table partners him for golf, and Adam is out of a job.

Eric, meanwhile, has a malevolent glint in his eye as he watches Fergus take another ill-advised gulp of wine. “What is it you do, again, Fergus?”

“Communications.”

“PR,” Eric translates, for the benefit of the rest of the table. “Where is that based?”

There’s a pause before Fergus replies,“Swindon.”

Eric smiles, taking a sip of his beer. “Must be why you’ve really got your finger on the pulse of what’s going on on Fleet Street,”

“Probably more than someone who spends all day fucking around pretending to be recruitment consultant,” says Adam mildly, raising an eyebrow in Eric’s direction. “At least it’s possible to know what Fergus actually does for a living.”

There’s a nasty silence while Eric appears to be considering his response, but they’re saved from further argument by the announcement that the bride and groom are about to have their first dance. Eric and girlfriend throw down their napkins and stalk off to join the audience at the edge of the dancefloor.

Fergus grins. “Yeah, fuck off, you stupid twat.” He turns to look Adam in the face for the first time that evening, and he’s attractively pink and a little dishevelled. “You going up?”

“Fuck, no.”

Weddings, in Adam’s experience, follow a familiar pattern. There’s the awkward meal in the company of strangers, everybody getting pissed enough on free wine to make exhibitions of themselves on the dancefloor, the possibility of copping off with someone you never have to see again the following morning, and the messy denouement, when the bride starts crying and the groom has to be carried off to bed. By his estimation, they’re currently somewhere between stages two and three, the copping off having been curtailed by the fact he’s driving home in just under two hours’ time and is reluctant to make the effort for so little reward.

Somehow, though, the evening has been salvaged from complete disaster by the fact that Fergus is such an appalling, catty drunk. He’s swiped another bottle of wine from a neighbouring table and doesn’t seem to mind that Adam isn’t able to help him finish it; he’s pink-faced and pinning Adam with bright, slightly unfocused eyes, and Adam thinks it’s probably a very good thing he’s sober, because this is the kind of night that ends with regrettable, drunken sex and inevitable awkwardness the next day. Ordinarily, he’d be well up for it, but Fergus is swiftly turning into someone Adam doesn’t want to have to pretend not to know, if they ever cross paths again. In fact, he’d quite like to cross paths again, and he’s spent the last ten minutes considering how he can give Fergus his number without it coming across like he’s on the pull.

Fergus is in the midst of a diatribe against the selfish wankers who’d cleared up all the wedding cake by the time he stumbled over to retrieve some. Instead, he’d brought back a slab of stilton and a small mound of water biscuits, pushed them in Adam’s direction and told him, “I fucking hate blue cheese.”

“You still in the TA?”

Fergus blinks at him and frowns. “Yeah. Second Lieutenant, Signals. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

Fergus is engaged in crumbling a cracker into shards on his plate. He glances at Adam briefly. “Sorry for dragging you into the Rothermere thing.”

Adam shrugs. “They’re all fucking dinosaurs. Desmond’s worse than most.”

“How long are you planning on staying at the _Mirror_?”

Adam flexes his fingers around the stem of his empty wine glass. He hasn’t told anybody yet, but Fergus is blinking at him sleepily and probably won’t remember the conversation in the morning, in any case. “I’m not. Interview at the _Mail_ on Tuesday.”

Fergus pulls a face, as though Adam has asked him to wade through shit. “The _Mail_?”

“It’s a good move; Deputy Night Editor.”

“How many pieces of silver do they pay you for that, these days?”

“Enough.” Adam frowns at Fergus over his wine glass. “And fuck off, could be worse.”

“What, editing _SS Weekly,_ the discerning Neo-Nazi’s periodical?”

“Oh, come on. Just because someone disagrees with you about immigration, doesn’t make them a Nazi.”

Fergus raises his glass in a mocking toast. “How terribly reductive of me. A bunch of right-wing reactionaries who only support abortion if it’s in the cause of eradicating homosexuals. Mustn’t fucking call them Nazis.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“Why don’t you ask Dacre how he feels about the gays, then, when they ask if you’ve got any questions at the interview?”

“Alright. I’m not saying you’re wrong, for fuck’s sake.”

The truth is, Adam’s spent six years as sub-editor under Piers fucking Morgan, during such greatest editorial hits as likening German football fans to members of the Wehrmacht, committing investment fraud, and hiring Christopher Hitchens, a man so staunchly pro-EU he made the average _Mirror_ reader’s head spontaneously explode. The _Guardian_ wouldn’t touch him with a hand grenade at the end of a very long stick, and Bill from the _Telegraph_ had openly laughed in his face when he’d made tentative enquiries about a job.

He pushes back his chair and glances in the direction of the loos. “Back in a minute,” he mutters, leaving Fergus staring after him. Fuck him. It’s not his fault Adam’s career has painted itself into a corner.

The urinals are mercifully free when Adam enters, but from the sounds of it there’s more than one person crammed into the furthest cubicle; they’re either scoring or fucking, and neither is Adam’s business, so he pisses and goes to wash his hands. He’s drying them on a paper towel when the cubicle door opens and two red-faced investment-banker types whom Adam recognises as having been ushers at the ceremony tumble out, dabbing at their noses and blinking at him with wide, strung out eyes. Adam is acutely aware that he’d sell his kidney for a line of coke, to take the edge off Fergus’ belligerent, judgmental home truths.

When he heads back to the table, Fergus is staring morosely into his wine. He glances up as Adam slumps into his seat and gives him an awkward smile. “I’m a twat.” His lips and teeth are stained purple. “Fucking armchair politician, especially when I’m pissed.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Fuck off.” Fergus frowns into the depths of his wine. “You ever think about going into politics?”

Adam snorts. “Once you’ve had to deal with actual politicians, it loses its appeal.”

“Very cynical,” says Fergus.

“Have you, then?”

“What?”

“Thought about going into politics?”

Fergus pulls a complicated face. “Too much fucking compromise. It’s easy to call the PM a twat when you’re stuck in fucking Swindon.”

“Do you live there?”

“Fuck, no,” says Fergus vehemently. “Reading.”

“And that’s better?”

“Oh, fuck off. You can afford to live on Pall Mall, on a sub-editors wage, I imagine.”

“Close.” Adam grins despite himself. “Lewisham.”

Fergus rolls his eyes extravagantly. “Fuck me. No wonder you were willing to drive all the way out here, I bet you’re fucking grateful to spend a weekend without worrying about being stabbed.”

“Do you get up to town, much?”

“I could get up to ‘town’, if I wanted to.” Fergus sneers a little. Adam supposes he deserved it.

“I play squash near Paddington,” he says, taking his chance. The night is rapidly sliding towards stage four, if the carnage on the dancefloor is anything to go by, and he’s too tired to worry about coming across like a lunatic. “Bloke I used to play with just moved to Manchester. You interested?”

“In playing squash with you?” Fergus’ dubious tones manage to imply that he thinks this is all a not-very-cunning prelude to date-rape.

“Well, I’m not asking you to fucking marry me.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Right, give me your number. I’ll ring you next week.”

Fergus ends up asking the people on the next table for a pen, returning triumphantly after an elderly relative of Mark’s extracts a biro from her handbag. He scribbles his phone number on the back of his place setting, and Adam tucks the little fold of card into his wallet.

With an appalling lack of irony, Mark and Rashida have chosen to bring their wedding to a close with 'The Chemistry Between Us'. Given the vast quantities of substances consumed in the loos, and the fact their relationship has been constructed largely on the basis of being off their tits at parties, Brett Anderson crooning about drugs being the only reason two people want to fuck one another seems, to Adam's mind, an unfortunate choice.

“Are you staying nearby?” Fergus asks, as Rashida clings tearfully to her bridesmaids in the middle of the dancefloor.

“Driving back. Got to be in at 11 for the Monday edition.”

Fergus looks appalled by the idea of driving back to London at this hour and Adam is inclined to agree with him, thinking with antipathy of the higgledy-piggedly lanes he has to navigate before he’s back in the civilised world of streetlights and dual-carriageways.

Fergus glances at him. “I’ve got a room at the Travelodge in Tunbridge Wells. It’s got a sofa.”

Adam looks at him properly, taking in the high pink of his cheeks, the frown hovering behind his expression as though he expects Adam to accuse him of something. Adam’s tired, but not too tired, and if he took Fergus up on his offer, he probably wouldn’t end up sleeping on the sofa.

“Thanks. I need to get back.”

Fergus very carefully fails to react, simply nodding and tipping his head to knock back the rest of his wine. Adam is relieved.

By the time Mark and Rashida have been poured into a car decorated with ribbons and silly string, Adam and Fergus are hovering awkwardly in the car park, while Fergus waits for his taxi to arrive.

“Want one?” Fergus pulls out a packet of Silk Cut. Adam has been abstemious all evening, so he accepts one and lets Fergus light it for him.

They watch Manc Eric depart without deigning to take his leave and Fergus gives he and his sour-faced girlfriend the finger behind their backs.

A minute later, as a yellow minicab pulls off the narrow lane and onto the gravel. Fergus stubs the cigarette beneath his toe.“Think this is me. Ring me about the squash.”

“Will do,” says Adam, watching him go.

He smokes the rest of the cigarette after the minicab has departed, then fishes the car keys out of his pocket and decides he might as well begin the journey back to civilisation. When he gets home, it’s nearly two in the morning and his best suit smells of smoke.


	2. Chapter 2

**San Francisco, 2018**

Fuck all of it. Fuck San Francisco, with its damp and its cold; fuck leaving his comfortable, familiar apartment to stay in a succession of shitty hotels for weeks at a time. Fuck the continental USA. Fuck the West Coast, and fuck Pacific Gas and Electric in particular. The lift from the tenth floor conference suite has taken just long enough, and now Fergus is operating at a level of barely-suppressed rage that threatens to boil over if anyone so much as glances in his direction.

The doors open onto the fifth floor and a large man in an expensive suit peers at him in suspicion as he shuffles inside and presses the button for the lobby. Fergus avoids his eyes. He’s aware of the picture he presents, in the aftermath of one of these entirely fucking pointless meetings: sweaty, rumpled, scarlet with rage. He must look like a psychopath. He doesn’t blame the man for edging away and keeping his eyes firmly on the doors.

This is just one of the many things Fergus has come to hate about living in the States: the fact that his anger, the rage that fuels him, is taken as a sign of some form of dangerous insanity. In a world of smiles and teeth and ‘have a nice day’, he’s a rabid dog, snapping and snarling and once, unforgivably, making the timid intern cry. He’d fallen over himself to apologise to her, once he’d realised the sobbing was because he’d called the team a shower of cunts. Then he’d apologised to the severe delegation dispatched by HR to ascertain whether he was, in fact, having a breakdown, and promised he wouldn’t do it again. Since then, everyone seems to have accepted that bursts of profanity are a symptom of some form of quaint, British disease. He’s had to make an effort with the smiles and the teeth and the ‘no, you have a lovely day’s and the sheer, inane superficiality of it is driving him, slowly but surely, into an early grave.

The guy gestures to the illuminated panel beside the open doors. “This your floor, buddy?” 

“No. Ground floor.”

The truth is, when he stalked into the lift outside the meeting room, he’d jabbed furiously at a number of buttons until the doors closed in the face of PG&E’s Head of Governance, and hadn’t much cared whether it deposited him on the ground floor or catapulted him into space. His apprehensive companion shrugs and the doors slide closed.

There’s something shiny and tight about the way his skin fits, after these strategy meetings in which he’s told what he can and can’t care about. It reminds him of his first time setting foot in San Francisco. He’d been summoned to a meeting of public relations minions and corporate responsibility tosspots to discuss priorities for the coming round of Congressional hearings. He’d caught a cab straight from the airport and tumbled out onto the pavement in front of the PG&E sky-scraper and wondered, not even for the first time that day, what the hell he thought he was doing there.

“A genuine chance to make a difference,” was how Rick had described the job, when he’d called Fergus to persuade him to accept it. “Forget all the red-tape and having your hands tied. The power’s always been with the lobbyists; it’s the way change gets made.”

The lift judders to a halt and the doors slide open again; the guy beside him slips out with an air of relief. Fergus watches him go, wondering what cog he is, in which part of the machine. He’d had an air of impatience and well-remunerated self-satisfaction: Fergus would put money on Legal.

“Excuse me, are you going up again?”

Fergus blinks at a woman waiting to get in, whose smile suggests she isn’t keen to share a lift with him. He scowls and sets off in the wake of the nervous lawyer. The foyer of the PG&E Building is a triumph of Beaux Arts excess, a shiny cavern faced in marble. The last time Fergus was here, his shoes had squeaked the whole way across it from the lifts to the revolving doors; he’s remembered to wear a different pair, this time.

His phone’s in his hand before he’s reached the security desk. He jams it between his shoulder and ear while handing over his visitor’s pass and mumbles his thanks at the security guard he hands it to.

Tom picks up on the fourth ring. “Hi, Fergus. How was the meeting?”

“A complete fucking waste of my time. Can you get me on an earlier flight?”

“The hotel’s booked til tomorrow.”

“Yes, I’m aware, but if I have to spend twenty minutes more than necessary stuck here, I might actually die.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Great. I’m going to go and resist the temptation to hurl myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Tom laughs and hangs up. They all do it: laughing in the face of Fergus’ existential hatred of his existence, as though, if they’re jolly enough, the unnerving British man will stop professing his desire to end it all. It’s another thing that makes working in the States a constant source of frustration. No one, absolutely no one, understands how serious he is about hating every second of it. Maybe they’re all just wondering why he doesn’t fuck off back to London, and the laughter is their way of avoiding saying it to his face.

There’s the rub, in any case. Why doesn’t he just fuck off back to London?

He’s saved from having to confront the answer to this question, by the arrival of a text from Tom.

_Flight changed: 18.10 SFO-JFK. Boarding pass in email._

Thank Christ.

The weather in San Francisco is just another reason why Fergus isn’t keen on visiting. It ought to be one of the few things that make him feel at home. That morning, when he’d woken up and gazed out of his hotel room window, there’d been an ugly fog hovering over the bay; when he gets through the revolving doors and out onto the street, the air is wet and frigid. He turns up his collar.

He summons an Uber, deliberately choosing one fifteen minutes away on the other side of the Financial District, and scurries round the corner to wait for it. There, on the plaza between the old and new PG&E buildings, he fumbles the wrapping off a box of Marlboro menthols. He’d jumped out of the taxi a block early that morning in order to buy them, along with a novelty lighter in the shape of a cable car, having suffered a premonition of the likely outcome of the meeting. He lights one, inhales a disgusting lungful of smoke, and exhales it at the sky, which continues to glower down at him, the sullen colour of lead.

Some people manage to make smoking look cool. They can flick a cigarette between long fingers, hollow their cheeks and blow a noxious plume over their shoulder and still, somehow make it look sexy, even though everyone knows it’s not cool, anymore, to smoke. Fergus is not one of those people. He’s always looked like a fifth-former sneaking a fag behind the bike-sheds, too desperate for a hit of nicotine by the time he actually lights up to bother about doing it with elegance. It’s one of the reasons he gave up. These days, he buys a pack of ten when he knows he’ll only need one and throws the other nine away.

A woman passing on the street throws him a sideways, judgmental glance and he resists the urge to give her retreating back the finger. This is the other thing he resents about San Francisco. He feels grubby, here. There’s a contingent of Bay Area executives, ones with whom he’s just shared a boardroom table, who seem to hover on a cloud of their own abstemious wellbeing, uniformly young-ish and unblemished and powered by Soylent and self-righteousness. At least back in Washington, the majority of the people he meets are wearing a familiar kind of exhaustion, running on caffeine and the heady toxicity of proximity to power. Those people, he understands.

The car, when it pulls up, is driven by a man Fergus judges to be of a similar age, whose name, according to Fergus’ phone, is Benoit. He’s frowning at his phone when Fergus slips into the back seat, having crushed the last of the cigarette beneath his shoe.

“The Omni, right?”

Fergus agrees. Then, in a fit of impetuous resentment at having to spend what’s left of the day in another series of hotel rooms, airports and aeroplanes, says, “Actually, can you drop me at the Museum of Modern Art?”

Benoit glances up at him in the rearview mirror, eyebrows folded together. “You said the Omni.”

“Yes, I know, but can you drop me at the Museum instead?”

“For real?”

Fergus sighs. With the traffic, there’s every likelihood he’d be able to walk to SFMoMA in the time it’ll take them to reach the end of Beale Street, but he’s committed, now. Perhaps his accent will allow Benoit to assume he’s a tourist. “Please.”

“Dude, it’s your money.”

There’s something sarcastic and withering gathering steam behind Fergus’ teeth, but the thought of his Uber rating taking another nosedive makes him swallow it resentfully.

The car pulls out into traffic and Fergus reaches into his pocket for his phone. He’s spent the last two years in a perpetual struggle with his own nature to maintain a state of inbox zero. During the crisis, while he’d stared at the walls and wondered how he was ever going to clamber his way back out of it again, he’d listened to a lot of podcasts about productivity and goal-setting. Inbox zero had seemed like a place to start, when he’d felt like every communique from the outside world was eroding his will to continue to exist.

The contents of his inbox are as expected. Tom’s email containing his updated boarding pass; five responses between his team and a representative of Lennox Yearwood, into which he’s been unnecessarily CC-ed; the digest of his Twitter feed. Fergus stops scrolling on an email from a name he doesn’t recognise.

Amanda Yeung, at Little, Brown. _Little, Brown. Little, Brown._ Publishing. That’s where Fergus recognises it from. Fergus is staring at this portion of the notification in order to avoid looking directly at the other half. The subject line reads: _Fact-checking re Adam Kenyon._

Fergus abruptly and urgently realises that the cigarette was a bad idea; he thinks he might need to be sick. The traffic is moving again. 

His thumb hovers over the screen. Swipe left, and the email will disappear into his trash folder, as though it had never been there to begin with. He can deny all knowledge, plead ignorance if there’s a follow-up phone call to Tom. Tom, who’ll bully him into replying. And that, inevitably, will be worse. Tom will know, then. He’ll know that Fergus has started deleting emails for no justifiable reason; he’ll know that Fergus is hiding something. Swipe right, and he’ll have to read it. He doesn’t want to; he can’t.

“Here you go.” Benoit swings the car into a space beside the kerb. “SFMoMA. Entrance is up the steps. Dude,” he adds, at a louder volume, as though Fergus is not only a tourist but demonstrably an idiot. “We’re here.”

“Fuck.” Fergus jabs at his phone screen. The email disappears and an icon of a waste paper bin wiggles at him encouragingly, as though to say, ‘well done!’. “Shit. Sorry,” he adds, in Benoit’s direction. “Fucking hell.”

“You okay, man?”

Benoit has turned around in his seat and is peering at Fergus through the gap between the headrests. He wants Fergus out of his car, this much is obvious, but he also seems genuinely, albeit reluctantly, concerned. Fergus glances in the rearview mirror and realises he’s taken on a pallid, sweaty sheen. No wonder Benoit is worried.

“Fine.” He shoves his phone into his pocket and flings open the car door. “Never fucking better.”

“Hey, fuck you, too.”

Fergus slams the door behind him. It’s a good job he suddenly has more pressing concerns than the state of his Uber rating.

He makes it as far as the museum’s revolving doors. He’d had a fleeting idea that wandering the galleries might have been preferable to eating alone in the hotel restaurant. A visit to SFMoMA is one of the only redeeming features of these long, pointless visits to the West Coast. He’d been hoping for half an hour of gazing into the waterline of _Lake George_. Its placid symmetry quietens something in him, usually; well worth the entrance fee.

His phone is hot and slick in his hand. He wipes his palm on his trousers.

Two years. Two years, and he can’t even look at a name in an email with breaking into hot, anxious sweats. The familiar, swooping misery has reached inside him and is attempting to eviscerate him. A pair of young, fashionable women emerge from the museum’s doors and pass by as though it’s left him not only hollow, but invisible.

The thought of spending twenty dollars to slope, grim-faced, around the galleries is suddenly appalling. The thought of returning to New York is appalling. Fumbling in the pocket of his coat, he extracts another cigarette and holds it to his mouth. He fishes for the lighter, closes his hand around it, then decides against it. He stares at the unlit cigarette dangling between his fingers.

The phone in his hand vibrates suddenly, startling him into dropping the cigarette. He swears, almost drops the phone, too, and then jabs furiously at the screen.

“What?” He expects Tom to witter something about airport transfers and casting an eye over the proposal papers for the state hearings while he’s in the air.

“Good afternoon to you, too,” says Richard, arch and amused.

Richard has a voice like a 1930s film star. Once, it must have been a Massachusetts drawl, but it’s been clipped and managed into mid-Atlantic neutrality. Sometimes Fergus lets himself imagine he’s being felt up by Cary Grant, when Richard has him sprawled awkwardly on his organic cotton sheets and is murmuring ardently into his ear.

“Sorry.” Fergus is not entirely sure that he is. “Sorry, Richard. What did you want?”

“Only to see how the meeting went. And to enquire if you’d be back in time for me to take you to dinner?”

_Enquire_. Jesus Christ.

“I doubt it.”

“Shame. The meeting?”

“More bullshit about the renewables; no movement on managing the compensation.” Fergus closes his eyes and imagines, for a moment, letting Richard come round to the flat after he takes a cab home from JFK. It’ll be gone midnight, and Richard will be terribly understanding and offer him a conscientious blowjob and want to stay the night. “It’s been a fucking horrible day.”

“Maybe I can come over?”

“Maybe. I’ll let you know when I land.”

Richard says he looks forward to it and Fergus mumbles his goodbyes. He’s a dickhead, obviously, because Richard is the kind of man who will get a cab to Fergus’ flat in the middle of the night to listen to him complain at length about PG&E’s woeful comprehension of the concept of corporate responsibility and make him breakfast the following morning, inhabiting Fergus’ galley kitchen with an ease that makes Fergus want to slough off his own skin.

He opens the emails again and presses the waste paper basket icon. He stares at its contents for a moment before swiping left; the phone offers him a choice and he confirms his decision. Adam’s name disappears for good.

**Charing Cross Road, London, 1995** ****

Adam’s so drunk he’s having difficulty articulating his order, leaning over the bar so far that his shirt’s damp from spilled beer and he’s shouting into the barman’s ear, gesturing with his hands in case his words are incomprehensible.

It’s Mark’s twenty-second. They’ve been mates since fresher’s week. Adam, who’d moved into their shared flat three days before, had been persuaded to clamber into Mark’s bronze Nissan Sunny and tag along to a rave in a warehouse near Heathrow. It had been his first experience of a rave. It had been his first experience of a night out that didn’t consist of he and his mates crowding into the local nightclub where the denizens of the local girls’ school congregated. It had been the first time he’d ever hung out with anyone who was born north of Watford Gap and hadn’t been to private school.

The next morning, coming down hard and vaguely wishing he’d never left Southampton, Adam had told Mark about his ambition of writing for the _New Statesman_ and Mark had told him not to be a wanker. They’d lived together for two years, until Mark moved in with Rashida in their third and Adam had been left to find a flatshare with people from his course. Now, Mark’s a term into an MA in communications, and he’s brought a gaggle of uptight coursemates along to the pub. Adam’s decided to ignore them, in favour of plying Mark with booze and attempting to chat up Rashida’s friend, whose name he always forgets. They work together in a clothes shop off Tottenham Court Road. Every time she and Adam cross paths, she makes it abundantly clear she thinks Adam is pretty, but ultimately not worth the effort of letting him seduce her. He’s got a good feeling that tonight he can convince her otherwise.

He’s just finished asking for three pints of Stella, when he notices the pink-faced, cherubic, sweaty ginger who’s just inveigled his way to the bar beside him. The guy’s fringe is flopping into his narrowed eyes, his cheeks are flushed and he looks like he’s one wrong glance away from throwing a punch. Adam’s seen him before, at the houses of friends of friends, but they haven’t been introduced. He decides, on a whim, to rectify this state of affairs.

“You one of Mark’s lot?”

The ginger scowls, half an eye still on the barman, who is steadfastly ignoring him. “What?”

Adam leans closer. “You here with Mark?”

The ginger glances at Adam and leans in, too. “Yeah, from the course. You?”

“No, I’m a journalist.”

The ginger pulls back to fix Adam with a combative glare. “Oh, yeah, Mark mentioned. The tea-boy at the _Croydon Gazette_.”

Adam gives an expansive shrug. “Biding my time. Adam,” he offers, extending a hand. The guy’s handshake is firm, his palm hot against Adam’s before it’s placed back on the bar.

“Fergus.”

The barman hands over a pint and Fergus shifts, trying to catch his attention. He sails past, starts taking an order from the woman on Adam’s left. Fergus’ scowl deepens.

“Think you’ve got to look like you’re of legal drinking age to get served,” Adam says, watching with satisfaction as the glare is turned in his direction.

“Fuck off,” Fergus snaps.

Adam laughs at him and picks up his glasses, the third one jammed in between the other two, lager slopping over his fingers.

When Adam makes his way back to the table, Mark’s a long, boneless smear along the wall of a booth, one arm around Rashida. She’s laughing at something Manc Eric is relating, leaning back into Mark’s supine embrace. They look happy. Something within Adam squirms, as it always does, watching them nuzzle one another. He doesn’t examine it. It’s not like it’s his life Mark’s ruining, moving in with Rashida and acting like they’re already married, inviting people round for dinner parties and buying fucking IKEA bookshelves.

He deposits the glasses on the table, spilling more beer over himself in the process, and Mark leans forward to claim one. He raises it in Adam’s direction.

“Nice one, posh lad.”

“What’s posh about him?” It’s the first time Rashida’s friend - Jenny? Julie? Julia? - has referred to him all evening, so Adam considers this a victory.

“Right twat in first year. Total fucking biscuit-wanking knobhead.”

Adam takes a drink from his pint. “Says the man whose dad pays his rent.”

Mark gives him the finger. His gaze drifts over Adam’s shoulder and he grins, apparently pleased to see someone. Adam looks up as drinks appear in his peripheral vision: it’s ginger Fergus, whose mood doesn’t seem to have improved.

He pushes a tumbler containing a finger of wicked-looking green liquor in Mark’s direction. “There’s your fucking happy birthday.”

Mark sways towards the glass and sticks his nose in it.

“What the fuck’s that?” Adam asks.

Fergus shrugs. “Crème de menthe.”

“Green Huey!” cries Mark, toasting Fergus’ health. “Huey Green!”

Fergus clutches his pint defensively, slumping onto the stool beside Adam. “I asked him what he wanted and he wanted Crème de Menthe.”

“Billy Connolly,” Adam explains. “Two Scotsmen in Rome.”

“Right.”

Mark gestures at Fergus with his empty glass. “Ferg doesn’t fucking know Billy Connolly. He’s a biscuit wanker, too.”

“Fuck off, Mark.”

Rashida nudges Mark with an elbow. “Thinks he’s Arthur Scargill when he’s had a drink.”

“Oi, don’t gang up on me, it’s my birthday.”

“Don’t be a twat, then.”

Jenny-Julie-Julia leans forward to peer over Rashida’s shoulder. “What’s a biscuit wanker?”

Rashida cackles, gesturing at Adam and Fergus with her pint glass. “These two. It’s that game they all play at private school - wanking on a biscuit. The last one to come on it has to eat it.”

Mark nods sagely. “Fucking posh boys. All gobbling spunky biscuits. It’s all they do at private school: play rugby and wank each other off.”

“Fuck off,” says Adam. “We’ve got servants for that.”

“Bet you do, you fucking perv.”

“Well, on that note, delightful seeing you, as always, Mark.” Fergus’ hand is on his glass. “Don’t choke on your Crème de Menthe.”

“Cheers, mate.”

Adam watches him depart; he doesn’t go far, simply orbits the company until he’s sitting closer to the uptight postgrads. There’s a spiteful twinge in Adam’s chest at the thought of these arseholes still swanning around at lectures while he’s pissing about in Croydon, writing copy about Sunday League football fixtures and local crime figures.

It’s not long before Mark decides he wants to depart for the Cross, where there’ll be Es and sweaty dancing, and a slim chance Jenny-Julie-Julia might consent to letting Adam fuck her in the toilets. When Adam glances in the direction of the postgrads, they’re looking sceptical of the wisdom of Mark’s plan, which is to get in another round before last orders and take the night bus over to King’s Cross.

Before long, Ginger Fergus takes it upon himself to return to the bar. Adam grabs his and Mark’s empties and follows him, squeezing behind him in between a couple of blokes wearing suits.

“You coming to the club?”

Fergus glances at him swiftly over his shoulder, something briefly unguarded and curious in his expression. “Maybe. You?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Does he always start with the class warrior bullshit, when he’s drunk?”

Adam shrugs. “Depends how pissed he is. Gets chippier with every pint.”

“Hardly Nye fucking Bevan, is he? He’s from the Wirral. Does his dad really pay his rent?”

“Yep.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Since freshers. Couldn’t get into halls, shared a flat for a couple of years.” Fergus makes a non-committal noise and shuffles into a space marginally closer to the bar. “Where were you for undergrad?”

Fergus glances at him again. He seems bewildered by Adam’s determination to keep up the conversation. “Oxford.”

“No fucking way you haven’t wanked on a biscuit.”

“Fuck off,” says Fergus, but he’s grinning.

They shuffle closer to the bar, until Adam can pivot himself into an opening and extend an arm to stake his claim. Fergus is beside him, close enough that Adam can see that he’s sweating, a fine sheen of perspiration on his top lip.

“Which college?”

Fergus is watching the barman, waiting for his turn to slither closer to the bar. “Keble, Geography. You?”

“UCL. Politics.”

Fergus snorts unattractively. “Nice solid career path for both of us, there.”

“Yeah. Fuck me, though. Communications.”

“Fuck off, it’s not that bad.”

Adam says nothing; he’s heard enough from Mark to know this is probably not the case. One of the barmen shimmers into existence before him and Adam gratefully turns to order another round.

Once he’s been served, he turns to find Fergus hovering at his elbow, his own pints in hand. He hadn’t expected to be waited for. Fergus tips his head in the direction of the table and begins to make his way back there, scowling at the unfortunate souls who have the audacity to stumble into his path. Adam follows, amused, and deposits his drinks on the table to find that Fergus has settled next to him, on a stool that straddles the divide between the post-grads’ table and the one at which Mark and Rashida have set up court.

“Have you been to the Cross before?”

Fergus shakes his head. His frown seems to be a permanent defensive feature. It’s a shame; Adam can almost see him, high and sweating under house lights. He’s got the face for it.

Mark glances at Fergus with a fond familiarity Adam can’t imagine cultivating between himself and someone he’s only know for four months. “He’s a right fucking square.”

Fergus gives Mark the finger as he takes a sip of his drink. “Better things to do.” He glances in Adam’s direction as though challenging him to ask, but Mark gets there first.

“Bullshit. Like what?”

Fergus shrugs. “All those biscuits won’t wank on themselves.”

Mark guffaws, reaching over the table to thump Fergus on the arm, and Fergus smirks into his pint, his eyes darting in Adam’s direction again. Adam is smiling despite himself.

Fergus leans closer, when Mark has been distracted by an argument about whether to club together for a taxi. “Are you literally the tea boy, or was Mark being an arsehole?”

“Tea boy, sports correspondent, roving crime reporter.”

“Why Croydon?”

“They offered. Why PR?”

“The money, obviously.”

“Right,” Adam agrees. He ’s lucky to make it to the end of the month without having to spend a few days subsisting on toast and spaghetti hoops. The thought of building a life around an expectation of future riches seems utterly alien, at this point.

Fifteen minutes later, when Mark demands that they all down their drinks and follow him towards the night bus, Fergus shoots a glance over his shoulder at the other post-grads.

“I’m getting a train in the morning.”

Adam shrugs. “Just don’t go to bed.”

Fergus shoots him a glance. “Yeah, turn up at home grinding my teeth and smelling like a I’ve gone for a swim in the drip tray. Mum’ll love that.”

Adam’s skin feels too small, and there’s a giddy sickness behind his ribs. He fishes in his jacket for a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Fergus’ eyes track his movements as he extracts a cigarette and balances it on his lower lip. “Want one?”

Fergus takes a cigarette from the packet, and Adam offers up his lighter. For a moment, it seems as though Fergus will sway towards him, like it’s _Now, Voyager_ and Adam is Paul Henreid, lighting up for the two of them. Fergus’ eyes skitter sideways. “Thanks.”

The bell announces time for the clientele to leave, and Adam is relieved to be distracted by the business of people shrugging on jackets and shuffling for the door. Mark slings an arm around his shoulders, breathing boozily in his ear and slurring something about Julia being an open goal. Adam glances over his shoulder to find she and Rashida pulling each other along the pavement, swaying on their heels. They catch his eye and burst out laughing.

Fergus is muttering something, and by the time Adam turns back to him, he’s frowning again, flicking ash from the end of his cigarette like he’s never smoked before in his life. His jacket’s at least two sizes too big for him in the shoulders.

“What?”

“Said, I’m off. See you on Monday, Mark. Happy birthday.”

Mark makes token protests, tries to persuade Fergus and his uptight friends to come with them to the club, and Adam finds himself wishing he’d just let them go home. He leans against the bus stop and watches Fergus push the floppy hair off his forehead, shoves his hands in his pockets for lack of anything else to do with them.

Fergus glances over his shoulder as he and the others melt away in the direction of their university halls. “See you.”

Adam leans against the bus stop and watches them go. He feels sullen and discomfited, disappointed.

He prods Mark in the back with an elbow. “Got anything on you?”

Mark’s face breaks into a beatific smile, four pastel pills appearing in the palm of his outstretched hand. “Fill your boots.”

Adam takes one and watches Rashida and Julia place theirs on their tongue; he does the same.

The rest of the night unfolds around him as though he’s floating above it on a separate plane of existence; he reaches out to touch, feels Julia’s dress ripple and divide under his fingertips. There’s a smile on his face, and Mark and Rashida are everywhere, kissing his cheek and laughing into his open mouth. He tells himself he’s never felt so fucking alive. 


	3. Chapter 3

**New York, 2018**

Fergus has always liked flying. He enjoys the sense of being suspended between worlds, neither here nor there, cocooned where nobody can possibly expect him to do anything much but eat a disappointing meal, drink a complimentary glass of wine, and stare out of the window at miniaturised landscapes as they float by beneath. Tom finds this kind of lassitude infuriating and quizzes him when he lands about how he spends his time in the air, making pointed comments about Fergus having had the perfect opportunity to finally sign off on the latest of Tom’s briefing packets on the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.

Reluctantly, with an eye to having a free weekend, Fergus spends the last quarter of the flight with his nose in the dense screed of the Center for Environmental Justice’s annual report.He jots notes in the margin and starts drawing up a list of priorities for the next meeting with the California legislature. Tom will be shitting rainbows.

The next most pressing matter is working out how to weasel the firm’s way out of any suggestion of association with Jill Stein, in light of the Intelligence Committee investigation, but Fergus is inclined to see that as a communications rather than a campaigns issue and leave it to the PR team to sort it out. He forgets, sometimes, that he isn’t single-handedly responsible for upholding the firm’s reputation, and that he’s able to hide behind three protective layers of press office body armour.

By the time the plane lands, it’s late and he’s tired. In this mood, Richard’s company is likely to tip him in one of two directions: gratitude, or irritation. He decides to err on the side of caution and texts an apology, pleading exhaustion and begging off until Friday night, when he’ll be able to summon the patience to get through dinner in the hope of a careful, thorough blowjob in lieu of dessert, back at Richard’s apartment. 

_No problem,_ Richard replies. _Get some sleep. I’ll be looking forward to Friday._

During the cab ride home, Fergus types out a furious summary of the day’s events. Tom will have the minutes, but he wants, on record, to spell out quite how little he’s enjoyed participating in PG&E’s tragic, imminent, and entirely avoidable death spiral.

_It was noted -_ **_AGAIN_ ** _\- that Gov. Newsom’s reluctance to compromise on the issue of publicly assigning culpability prior to the findings of the internal investigation was, largely, due to the board’s_ **_UTTER DETERMINATION_ ** _not to cooperate with_ **_ANY PREVIOUS_ ** _IRP recommendations re culture and accountability. Anything I had to say about ACER would have been pissing into the wind._

Fergus toes off his shoes as soon as his apartment’s front door closes behind him, walks into the bedroom already stripping off his tie and his shirt, and falls asleep face down in the pillows still wearing most of his clothes.

The next three days are an absolute shitshow. Half the team is peddling furiously to keep up with the Congressional elections, and Fergus is forced to watch Madison and her appalling narcissist assistant, Joshua, dash from focus group meeting to community event, while he and Tom twiddle their thumbs and wait to see whether any of the incumbent representatives they’ve buttonholed as support for Affordable Clean Energy respond to their increasingly desperate pleas for contact. No one is mentioning overheads, or the fact their best-paying client is nosediving into bankruptcy. Or that association with PG&E is making Fergus the equivalent of bacon at a Bar Mitzvah in Sacramento, and even less popular in Washington. Fergus imagines how he feels is similar to how it felt to be standing on the deck of the Titanic, watching the last of the half-empty lifeboats row away.

Rick takes it with equanimity when Fergus tells him about Newsom’s stonewalling and the thing about the Titanic.“Look, we all know you’re fucking terrible at pressing the flesh. But you get a lunatic glint in your eye when you talk about community-powered microgrids, and no one else can sell that level of commitment. Passion is very persuasive, to a certain type of legislator.”

Having been, even briefly, a certain type of legislator, he knows that what Rick says to placate him isn’t untrue. But he also knows the kind of advice every incumbent representative will be receiving, in these last crucial few months before the elections, and he knows he wouldn’t touch PG&E with a shitty stick, either, if he were in their position.

Richard calls at 6 PM on Friday, when Fergus has been staring blankly at his laptop screen for the last half hour. “Will you let me take you out?”

When his phone rang, Fergus had dropped the pen he’d been idly chewing into his coffee cup in surprise and answered the phone swearing, wiping cold coffee off his biro onto a stack of Post-It notes.

“Where?”

“Wherever you’d like. Scalini Fedeli?”

Fergus grimaces. He loves Scalini Fedeli with every inch of his gluttonous heart, from the amuse bouches they serve between courses to the pistachio and hazelnut panino he’d gladly gorge on until he died, fat and happy, forcing down one final wafer-thin mint.

“I’m still at work.”

“I’ll come to you.”

“You don’t have to -”

“I know.” Richard is one of those people with an audible smile. “I want to.”

Fergus taps the biro against the side of the cup. “Thanks.”

An hour later, when Fergus emerges from the revolving doors, Richard is waiting for him on the pavement, still smiling. He’s in his overcoat and scarf and he’s wearing the glasses Fergus would grudgingly admit to finding a little bit sexy. His beard’s shot with silver beneath the streetlights.

“Hey,” he says, in that soft, Bostonian drawl. “Good day?”

“Of course not.” Fergus allows himself to be kissed gently on the cheek. It’s taken months of training not to flinch away, or to cast a glance over his shoulder for anyone who might have seen them. Richard had few lines, when they first got together, but this had been one of them.

“Well, not to make light of your trouble with California, but this afternoon I had a freshman try to support an argument about anthropomorphism with a reference to _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban._ Are you going to tell me about San Fran?”

“Can we not talk about work?”

“Of course.” Richard draws him in with a hand on his arm. “We’ll talk about whatever you like.”

“Sorry.” Fergus drags a hand across his face. He can’t remember the last time he slept through the night. He’s had eighteen months of freedom from the insomnia, but now it’s back and it seems like an omen. “I’m sorry. Tell me about _Harry Potter_.”

“Fergus. I’ll give you my entire week’s lectures, if you want me to. Listen, if you’re too tired for dinner, let’s get takeout.”

If Scalini Fedeli, with its soft candlelight and the way every conversation is made intimate by the embrace of its vaulted ceiling, is too much, then the thought of perching on Richard’s tastefully worn leather sofa with a carton of lo mein is too painful to be borne. He might burst into furious, exhausted tears, in the aftermath of the shock he’d received, peering at his emails in the back seat of Benoit’s Uber. He nudges Richard’s arm, ignores his furrowed brow and anxious concern.

“You wanted to go out. Let’s go out.”

Waking up in Richard’s apartment is something Fergus generally tries to avoid. Unfortunately, after a bottle and a half of wine, he’d been too muzzily appreciative of Richard’s arm around his waist and the warm scratch of beard on his inner thighs to remember this. The blowjob had been lovely.

Elsewhere in the apartment, Richard is listening to NPR and making coffee. The smell makes Fergus’ stomach lurch. The bedroom is mercifully dark, the curtains still drawn, and he lies breathing slowly for a while, willing his head to cease its throbbing.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to heave himself out of bed, shrug on yesterday’s clothes, which Richard will have folded and placed on the chest of drawers at the foot of the bed, and join Richard in the kitchen for coffee. He could read the _Wall Street Journal_ and let Richard make him breakfast, and Richard would smile as though Fergus had bestowed on him the greatest possible gift. Fergus’ stomach mutinies a second time and a hot, anxious sweat prickles at his temples. He is an interloper here.

He rolls over and finds that Richard has plugged his phone into a spare charger. He fumbles for it, pulling it free of the cable and sees a number of email notifications, most of which can wait until he’s considerably less hungover. One says it’s from the London solicitors; he opens it and squints at it in the weak sunlight filtering through the curtains.

_Dear Mr. Williams,_

_Further to your instruction regarding the valuation of your property at 15 Lennox Road, Camberwell, please find enclosed the relevant estimate. Valuation is reflective of the property in its current state and does not take into account any planned building or improvement works._

_Should you wish to give further instruction regarding the sale of the property, we will be pleased to take this matter forward on your behalf._

_Kind regards,_

_M. Glennon_

_Solicitor at Law_

_Macluskey & Associates_

Fergus clicks on the attached document and stares blankly at the numbers it contains. He had hoped, somewhat vainly given that he’d rung Martin three weeks ago asking him to arrange the valuation, that the whole process would have fallen through, somehow. That he wouldn’t actually have to see the possible selling price written down, that it would all just trundle on without the need for a decision, one way or another.

The trouble is, there’s only one sensible option. His life is in the States, now, and with Mum gone, who is there to go back home to? Fuck. It’s not _home_ , that’s supposed to be the point. It’s been two years.

In the kitchen, Richard’s listening to _Serial._ It’s one of the episodes from Season 2; Fergus listened to all of it during his last holiday and recommended it to him. It’s such a shame, Fergus thinks bleakly. If Mum was ever going to like anyone Fergus summoned up the courage to bring home, she would have really liked Richard.

In the end, it’s lucky that circumstances conspire to take any need for decisiveness out of Fergus’ hands, because he walks into the office on Monday morning and Rick tells him he no longer has a job.

“Look, Fergus - maybe we should take this someplace else -”

Tom is out, somewhere, and on arriving at the office, Fergus has been greeted by Rick, wearing his most apologetic face and telling him that he’s being let go. Fergus is teetering on the brink of the kind of explosion Human Resources have warned him about.

He drops his jacket, which he’s only just taken off, onto the back of his chair. “Why the fuck would I want to do that?”

Rick spreads his hands in a gesture of conciliation. He’s probably done some sort of course on conflict resolution. “I don’t think there’s any reason this needs to be done in public.”

Madison and Joshua, at their desks on the other side of the office, are trying not to look as though they’re finding Fergus’ dismissal entertaining, but Joshua is wearing an expression that suggests he might come in his pants if Rick tries to explain, once more, that Fergus will need to clear his desk and hand in his security pass by the end of the day.

“Well, I fail to see how it’s likely to make it worse.”

“Fergus -”

Fergus has had just about enough of Rick’s modulated tone of de-escalation. “Just - fuck off, Rick - where the fuck has this come from?”

Rick has angled himself so that their conversation is shielded from Madison and Joshua’s voyeuristic gaze and extends an arm to shepherd Fergus in the direction of his office. “Fergus, c’mon, man. Let’s take it someplace else. We’re all cut up about this,” he continues, once Fergus is installed in a chair on the opposite side of the desk and the office door is closed behind them.

Fergus rubs a trembling hand over his mouth. “Yeah, I’m sure you wept yourself to sleep last night. What the fuck is this about?”

“We’ve had a complaint from one of our clients -”

“Who?”

Rick spreads his hands again, and Fergus briefly considers trying to staple one of them to the desk. “It doesn’t matter who -”

“Yes, it fucking does. What complaint?”

“Fergus, I’m going to have to ask you to moderate your language.”

Fergus snorts. “Good luck sacking me twice. _What_ fucking complaint?”

Rick sighs heavily. “PG&E aren’t happy with your conduct in relation to ACER and the compensation negotiations.”

“What fucking conduct?” Fergus is out of his seat and pacing the square of carpet between Rick’s cabinet holding the framed photo of him shaking hands with Obama, and the larger than life-size cut-out of a beaver they’d used in the photo-op with the North Continental Logging Federation. “I flew out to San Francisco, I attended their bullshit meeting, and I gave recommendations they ignored. I’ve had root canal treatment less excruciating than watching them shuffle pages of the IRP report, looking for excuses to drive their entire PR effort into the ground.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about.”

“What, giving my opinion? Since when did we fucking ‘moderate our language’?”

“Look, I understand that you’re not happy -”

Fergus laughs, pushing a hand through his hair. “Not happy? I’m fucking ecstatic. I’ll get to walk away from this fucking bullshit with a nice, fat fucking payout.”

“We’ll be happy to provide references.”

“You can swivel on your references.” Fergus pauses, as an unpleasant thought rises to the forefront of his indignation. “Hang on, on what grounds did PG&E make a fucking complaint?”

Rick shrugs as though it’s no big deal, and this in itself is enough to let Fergus know he’s on the money. “They got hold of a report your wrote, on the back of the last meeting. I understand you made some informal minutes.”

“My notes to Tom? Yeah, for Tom’s reference, so he could start thinking about how to spin the wildfires report with the arseholes in Washington. Did that little shit leak this to them?”

Rick leans back in his chair, his fingers steepled like he’s Fergus’ disapproving headmaster. “C’mon, Fergus, I don’t think that language is helpful.”

“Sorry, allow me to moderate it. Did that sanctimonious, jumped-up little streak of shit send my private memo to our client in order to get me fired, like some cut-price fucking Richard III?”

“Fergus, I have no idea how that information reached the client. They’ve simply said they’re unhappy with your representation.”

“But we’re losing the fucking contract, anyway, as soon as they take the plunge and go for bankruptcy! There’s no other way out for them, once the fines start rolling in. They could think I’m Hitler’s long-lost fucking twin, and it wouldn’t make a fucking difference!”

“Fergus, without PG&E we can’t afford to keep you.”

Fergus looks at Rick, leaning back in chair as though the thought of proximity to Fergus is something he finds alarming. “How long have you been planning this? What the fuck happened to my appealing to the ones with a conscience?”

“Events have moved quickly.”

“Oh, fuck you, Rick. I uprooted my whole life for this fucking job - ”

“We’re grateful that you did. But, I’m afraid you’ve come to the end of your journey with us.”

Once Fergus has slammed his way out of Rick’s office, grabbed his jacket, and scooped the contents of his desk into a cardboard box, he wishes misery and sexually debilitating diseases on Madison and Joshua, and swears if he ever sees Tom again, he’ll twist his smug, duplicitous head off his scrawny chicken neck with his bare hands. He leaves before security can arrive, stalking out onto Wall Street clutching his box of possessions like the poor fuckers he’d seen on the news after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

By the time a taxi deposits him outside his apartment block, he’s made a number of what Richard would probably call rash decisions. He unlocks his front door, dumps the box under the kitchen counter, and reaches for his phone.

“Fergus,” says Martin, when he picks up. “How can I help?”

“I’m going to hold off on selling the house,” Fergus tells him. “For now, anyway. I’m - I’m coming home for a bit, so I’ll be living there for a while.”

Martin takes this in his stride. “Of course. You will need to resume payment of council tax, once someone is in residence.”

Fergus could almost cry with relief. In the scheme of things, council tax is an entirely surmountable obstacle. “Yes, fine. I’ll let you know about selling it in a few months. I’ll just need to stay for a while.”

“Of course,” Martin says, again, as though this is the sort of nonsense his clients come out with all the time. “Do let me know as soon as you decide to put it on the market.”

“I will,” Fergus assures him, before putting down the phone and turning his attention to the next item on his list. It’s two years since he last arranged his own flights. He probably doesn’t get a good deal, but it’s worth the money to book himself a business class ticket to Heathrow in two days’ time.

By the time Richard calls, at just gone five, to enquire about Fergus’ plans for the evening, Fergus has subsided from formulating his frantic escape plan to staring listlessly out of the window at the distant view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Richard is smiling audibly again, and the thought that Fergus should be the one to provoke this reaction nearly chokes him.

“I know we went out on Friday,” Richard is saying, while Fergus tries to work out what to tell him about London, “but I’ve got a recommendation for a place that does great dim sum.”

“Sounds lovely,” Fergus says, which is a lie, because he’s always hated Richard’s up-market idea of Chinese food, when all he ever really wants is a plate of deep-fried chicken balls in luminous orange sweet and sour sauce.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

Fergus struggles, for a moment, to say anything of use, settling for, “Can you come over?”

It’s the first time he’s invited Richard into his flat when he hasn’t been pissed. Something about his appearance must tip Richard off as soon as he opens the door, because his curious, amused expression dissolves into a look of such tender concern that Fergus can’t bear to look at him. He steps back to let Richard inside, edges around him to close the door, and Richard’s kind, concerned eyes fall heavy and hot like branding irons on the back of his neck.

“I brought dim sum,” Richard says gently, brandishing a brown paper bag in one hand, the smell of the contents of which make Fergus’ stomach growl.

Fergus grabs the bag and hurries with it into the kitchen. He fetches plates from the cupboard above the kettle, and then has to clutch at the counter and lift a hand to his mouth to stifle the sound of misery that falls out of him, unbidden. He’s had too much whisky and his head is throbbing.

“Fergus?”

He turns his back, swatting ineffectually at his eyes. Richard is hovering solicitously in the doorway. He approaches slowly, as though Fergus is an unexploded bomb.

“I’m just tired,” he says, pre-emptively, turning away when Richard lays a careful hand on his arm. “It’s been a very long, very shitty day. Just give me a minute.”

“Forget about the food,” Richard says gently, tugging at him with the hand on Fergus’ arm. He peers into Fergus’ downturned face, his expression heartbreakingly kind. “What the fuck happened?”

Fergus can count on one hand the times he’s heard Richard swear; it’s one of the things about Fergus that he no doubt finds embarrassing, when they’re out together in public.

“I’m going back to London,” he says.

Richard says nothing, and when Fergus risks glancing up at him, he is staring with something akin to resignation at the wall beside Fergus’ head. “When was this decided?”

“I didn’t - Rick sacked me. I need to go back to London and sell the house, work out what the fuck I’m going to do next. It’s only for a few weeks. A month, or so.”

Richard nods, letting go of Fergus’ hand.

“Say something,” Fergus pleads, moments later, when he still hasn’t replied.

“Like what?” Richard asks, smiling at him. “Like, I wish you didn’t have to go? It’s okay, I understand.”

“Do you?” Fergus asks, wondering whether it can possibly be as easy as this.

“Pretty sure I do,” says Richard. “Hey, at least we’ve still got dim sum.”

“Yeah,” says Fergus, breathing out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “I’m coming back. It’s just a visit, to get the house sold.”

“I know,” says Richard, kissing his cheek on his way to resume unpacking the takeaway.

**New Cross, London, 1996** ****

The Docklands has an eerie, ravaged character, like the footage of Sarajevo that always used to be on the news: empty office blocks with one wall ripped away; the debris of the explosion. Adam imagines that when it happened, there must have been thousands of sheets of paper fluttering into the river, like birds escaping from their cages. He’s standing at the cordon watching a bulldozer move rubble from one side of the street to the other, beyond which, just visible, is the crater.

It’s a week since the bombing. Adam had been getting ready to leave the office for the weekend when Steve, the deputy editor, had come racing back into the building and told them to turn on the TV. They’d gathered around it, the four of them who were still there, to watch the news come in.

“That’s the ceasefire over, then,” said Steve, as they watched the Met. Commissioner give his statement.

“Did they manage to evacuate?” Adam had asked, and no one had known the answer.

Adam’s mum hadn’t wanted him to come to London, when he was moving away for university.After the mortar attack on Downing Street, she’d declared she’d rather he move to the US than accept the offer from UCL, but it had been unconditional, and Adam had just been grateful to get out of Andover.

Fuck it. There’s no point putting it off any longer; the sooner he gets to the interview, the sooner he’ll know one way or another whether his dreams of escaping Croydon are finally being realised.

It’s ten minutes’ walk to the _Mirror_ ’s offices at Canary Wharf. On the way he rehearses his spiel, about his time at the _Pi_ , with emphasis on the obituary for John Smith that reduced the student union president to tears, and the times he’s broken stories at the _Gazette,_ like the night he doorstepped Richard Ottaway to ask him about the Tory leadership election and nearly (though he won’t mention this in the interview) got himself the sack.

Outside the _Mirror_ building, he hesitates, an icy fist clenching in his chest. What he wants is to write for one of the broadsheets. Actually, what he wants is to be Jonathan Dimbleby, but that particular unfortunate bit of hero worship needn’t be mentioned in the interview, either. Nor the fact that Dimbleby had been single-handedly responsible for the great sexuality crisis of 1992, when he came back to the _Pi_ for a visit and shook Adam’s hand while asking him earnest questions about his plans for the future, prompting a reaction Adam can only categorise as inappropriate and mortifying. Definitely not something he needs to be thinking about, moments before stepping into the biggest job opportunity he’s ever likely to have fall into his path. He summons his courage, adopts a self-assured smile, and pushes his way into the building.

Three hours later, he emerges into thin February sunshine stunned and elated. He’s had a mild grilling from the senior editorial team, a handshake from Piers Morgan, and a job offer, in quick succession. Either the John Smith obituary really was dynamite, or doorstepping Ottoway had made quite the impression. Either way, forget the broadsheets, for now. He’s soon to be very junior editor at a major national newspaper, and he’s not even twenty four.

When Adam arrives home, Xavier is out. It’s a great relief, because the only interaction they’ve had over the last two weeks has been increasingly fraught conversations about Adam bringing people back on a week night, and Xavier needing sleep for his shifts at St. Thomas’. Xavier takes his degree more seriously than any of the other medical students Adam has ever met. He never tires of letting Adam know quite how worthless his existence has been, in comparison. The first thing he’ll do with his first pay check from the _Mirror_ is find somewhere else to live.

He undoes his tie with one hand, dumps his jacket over the back of a chair, and grabs the phone. It takes four rings for Mark to pick up, and when he does Adam doesn’t bother to prevaricate about telling him his news.

“Fucking brilliant. Congratulations, mate. Definitely no excuse not to come round and get wankered, then.”

Adam had been reticent about agreeing to go along to the party, but the weight of the interview being lifted from his shoulders has left him giddy and unmoored. At Mark’s there’ll be things to drink and smoke and people to drink and smoke them with. If he stays in, he’ll ricochet off the walls a few times and get in another row with Xavier.

“What time are people getting there?”

“After eight, I think. Feed yourself first; you’ll need a bit of ballast.”

“Alright, Mum, fuck off.”

“See you later for booze, drugs and a load of people who’ll want to fuck you.”

“What, because I’m the new dogsbody at the fucking _Daily Mirror_?”

Mark chuckles. “Nah. I’m going to spread it around that you’re doing the falling-out-of-parties pages, you’ll be wading through blowjobs. See you later.”

When Adam turns up at Mark and Rashida’s flat, there’s already a crowd spilling out of the front door and onto the front steps, a few dedicated smokers who don’t seem to mind the cold. He pushes past them and makes his way to the kitchen, where he dumps the contents of his carrier bag - a bottle of vodka and a six-pack of Grolsch - and then heads off in search of Mark, a can of beer in each hand.

There’s music playing in the living room; something throbbing and urgent. Mark’s dedication to the club scene is something Adam admires, and still finds vaguely bemusing. It’s been a blast, being Mark’s friend, being a peripheral member of he and Rashida’s party crowd, but he’s never quite been able to convince himself - or most of their friends - that it’s a world to which he really belongs.

Two years ago, Manc Eric had taken he and Mark back home, on a pilgrimage to Manumission. “You know how we get in, yeah?” Mark had shouted in his ear, just before they got to the head of the queue, and then kissed him, under the direction of the bouncers, while Manc Eric cackled beside him. He’d had long hair, then, and Mark had tugged on it none-too-gently and hissed at him to get inside. Adam had spent the rest of a very confusing night turned on, high, dancing in a sweaty mass of bodies; he’d never felt so out of place, so euphoric, or so gleefully certain that his parents would have been horrified, if they could have seen him. He spends most of his time with Mark and Rashida feeling like he’s on _TV Nation_ , profiling people who inhabit a parallel universe powered mostly by dodgy acid.

Manc Eric’s here, somewhere; Adam can hear him, on his left, holding forth about something of little consequence. He pushes past and finds Mark perched on the arm of the sofa, talking earnestly to one of Rashida’s photography friends. He edges closer and catches Mark’s eye, holding up the beer as an offering.

“Fucking wanker.” Mark pulls him closer with one expansive arm. He presses a sloppy kiss against the side of Adam’s face. “Everyone’s been here hours.”

“Stopped off at the shops.”

“Well, Mickie’s been on a shoot with Brett Anderson all afternoon, and she’s about to tell me whether the rumours about his massive cock are true.”

Mickie casts Mark a withering look and takes a pointed sip of her drink.

“Oh, well. Worth a try. ‘Ve you seen Rash?”

Adam replies that he has not.

“She’s got something for you. You know Fergus, don’t you?” he adds. “Met him at my birthday thing.”

Adam shrugs. He’s seen Fergus a total of twice, since then, both times at the pub. Both times, Fergus had been wound up and scowling at Mark’s jokes, arguing with anyone who’d listen about the Berlin Mandate and the latest IPCC report, and Adam had been wise enough to keep his distance. Angry, ginger and pouting, looking like he’d just been sacked from Take That… Adam is self-aware enough to recognise that Fergus is decidedly dangerous.

“Fergus, you know Adam.”

Adam peers over Mark’s shoulder at the other end of the sofa. Sure enough, that sullen cherub’s face under its mop of ginger hair is frowning up at him.

“Didn’t know you’d be here.”

Fergus is holding a can of beer loosely in one hand, his eyes flickering over Adam’s face in confusion. “Didn’t realise I needed permission.”

“Didn’t think it was your scene.”

“Is it yours?”

Adam shrugs, eyeing Fergus’ sweaty temples and glassy eyes. He’s taken something, probably. People at Mark and Rashida’s parties usually do.

“I’m off to find Rash,” Mark murmurs, and Adam is left alone, sober, looming at the end of the sofa. He sits down so he doesn’t feel quite such a twat. So much for Mark and his promises of blowjobs and fame.

“Mark said you’d had an interview?”

Briefly, Adam is bewildered. Maybe Mark’s begun the PR campaign on his behalf, but started in the wrong place. “Yeah. At the _Mirror_.”

Fergus’ face paints a brief picture of disdain, and then he seems to remember his manners and tips his can in Adam’s direction. “Congratulations?”

“Yep. Got it. Junior editor, as of three weeks on Wednesday.”

“Excellent. I suppose,” Fergus adds, somewhat spoiling it. “If you go in for that kind of thing.”

“‘That kind of thing’?”

“I tend not to read the tabloids.”

Adam laughs despite himself. “Christ. Only the broadsheets for m’lord?”

“Oh, fuck off. You know what I mean. Isn’t Morgan a fucking nut job?”

“He’s clawing back readers.”

“Very fucking principled.”

Adam shrugs again.

“I’ve got an interview,” says Fergus, out of nowhere.

“Great.” Adam apparently can’t help himself, because he adds , “what for?”

“Energy. PowerGen, National Power. They’ve got graduate schemes.”

The very concept of a ‘graduate scheme’ makes Adam’s skin crawl. Imagine being stuck with fifteen other Ferguses and Marks, in their ill-fitting suits, clambering over one another for a foothold on the greasy ladder.

“I’m joining the TA, as well. Reserves,” Fergus corrects himself. “Just applied, officer training at Sandhurst.”

There’s something familiar about talking to Fergus, because he’s exactly the kind of self-centred, well-spoken dickhead Adam had gone to school with. Conversing with him is like slipping back inside a different, familiar skin. “Were you in CCF?”

“Army,” Fergus confirms. “You?”

“Yeah, army.”

Being in Hampshire, it had almost been expected that the boys would choose the Navy for Wednesday afternoons’ cadet training, but Adam had liked the army uniform better. He’d had an inkling, at thirteen, what turning up at the gates of the girls’ school in camouflage fatigues with his beret at a rakish angle could do for him. Joining the RAF had been out of the question, the attraction of being taught to fly planes outweighed by the fact that the older boys perpetually referred to it as the R-Gay-F. Adam had spent six years in that fucking place avoiding association with anything that could have seen him accused of being anything less than one hundred percent heterosexual.

“I should’ve joined up straight out of sixth form,” Fergus is saying, though he doesn’t look too upset about it. He’s smiling, faintly, looking at Adam with a hazy intensity Adam recognises from his own eyes in the mirrors of club toilets. “Mum wanted me to go to Oxford. Where did you go, for school?”

“Andover. Boarder.”

Fergus nods. He must have been at Oxford with half of Adam’s cohort of leavers. “I was at Bishop’s Stortford,” he offers, though Adam hadn’t asked.

“Did you board?”

Fergus shakes his head. “Day boy. I fucking hated it,” he adds. “And then I went to Oxford, and it was more of the fucking same. Thank Christ I came to my senses about post-grad. London’s horrible, but at least I’m not surrounded by those - those fucking chinless wankstains, anymore.”

It’s ridiculous, to be sitting in the middle of Mark and Rashida’s party, talking about school - a place Adam left well behind six years ago and about which he has never experienced any desire to reminisce. It feels like the awkward getting-to-know-you stage of a bad date. Adam suspects he wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of Fergus’ candid opinions about his education, were it not for chemical inducement.

“Do you want another drink?”

Fergus peers at the can in his hand in surprise, as though he’d forgotten he was holding it, then smiles up at Adam as he gets to his feet. “Thanks.” Jesus Christ. Turns out, it was much better when Fergus was scowling and ranting about global warming. Much safer.

Adam heads swiftly in the direction of the kitchen. He thumps his empty can onto the worktop and casts an eye around for Mark. He’s beginning to feel as though he’s been manipulated.

It takes five minutes to find Mark out in the tiny back yard, lighting up a cigarette and laughing with a bunch of edgy art school wankers Adam’s never bothered to get to know.

“Alright?” Mark raises his eyebrows as Adam approaches. “How’s it going?”

Adam tucks a hand into Mark’s elbow and propels him into the empty space beside the back door. “Are you trying to get me to fuck Fergus?”

Mark blows smoke over Adam’s shoulder. “Is it working?”

“Fuck off. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“What? He’s closeted, and you’re in need.”

“So you slipped him an E and hoped I’d deprive him of his fucking virginity?”

“Oh, fuck off. He’s not that fucking repressed. Fairly sure he knows his way around a bell-end.”

Adam rolls his eyes skyward. “You can be a total fucking wanker, sometimes.”

“Not interested, then? Never mind, I found Rash; look what she’s sent, to say well done for the interview.”

In Mark’s palm is a tab of acid bearing the black and white face of Mikhail Gorbachev.

“I’ve already had one,” Mark says. “So’s Rash. Keep up.”

Behind Adam, in the living room, square, uptight Fergus is blissed out and sloppy and vulnerable to any of the dubious characters who usually hang around Mark and Rashida’s parties. Adam might think he’s a bit of a twat, but he’s not a complete arsehole. The adrenaline from the interview has long-since worn off, leaving him drained and short of patience.

“Grow up, Mark, for fuck’s sake. I’m getting Fergus some water, and I’m going home.”

Mark laughs. Through it a little bit of malice surfaces, glinting meanly. He grins. “All alone?”

“Piss off.”

Adam stalks back to the kitchen, bumping into a girl so off her tits she tries to throw an arm around him to get him to dance. He shakes her off and reaches the relative safety of the kitchen. He grabs a mostly-clean glass, fills it with water and pushes his way back to the sofa. Fergus’s head is tipped back against the cushions, his eyes are closed, and he’s smiling to himself, his fingers tracing the pattern of the embroidered throw.

Adam looms over him and he opens his eyes. “Here.” Adam thrusts the water at him. “Drink this.”

Fergus chugs the glass, droplets of water trickling down his chin, then hands it back to Adam, who abandons it on the coffee table behind him. Duty discharged, he ought to be leaving.

Fergus is smiling beatifically at the ceiling. “I think I might be dying. I don’t mind, it feels amazing.” Then, his face paling dramatically, he lurches over the arm of the sofa and heaves onto the carpet.

“For fuck’s sake.” Fergus sits up, wiping the back of a shaky hand across his mouth. Fuck the mess; Mark can clean it up in the morning. “How are you getting home?”

Fergus appears not to have considered this. “On the Tube?”

“Right. We can share a cab. You’ll have to walk to Waterloo, though.” Adam extends an arm and hauls Fergus to his feet. His hand around Adam’s wrist is damp and burning hot.

The frown returns to settle across Fergus’ sweaty face. “I’m high, not fucking incapable.”

“Good, because I’m not fucking paying, if you’re sick in the taxi.”

Getting into a cab together was dangerous, Adam acknowledges this. For one, despite himself, he actually likes Fergus, and he makes a point of not sleeping with people he likes. Not men, anyway. It’s a good job Fergus currently smells faintly of vomit and is the colour of a murder victim on _Prime Suspect_.

“I am so fucking sick of being a student.” Fergus’ face is mostly hidden in the sleeve of his shirt, his head is pillowed on his arm against the window. “It’s been shit, with a few minor exceptions.”

Adam snorts. “Why don’t you drop out, then?”

Fergus raises his head far enough to glower at him. “And do what?”

“Take a fucking gap year. Go and find yourself in fucking Bali, or wherever. I don’t fucking know.”

Fergus makes a noise of misery, face buried in his sleeve again.

“Whereabouts, mate?” asks the cabbie, eventually, and Fergus tells him anywhere on the street will do. He shoves a tenner into Adam’s hands, stumbles out onto the pavement, and disappears in the direction of a dingy block of flats without so much as a backwards glance.

Two days later, another bomb explodes on a bus on the Strand. Adam is at the office, seeing the Monday morning edition of the _Gazette_ to press, when the news comes through. He and Steve work through until three re-writing the front page. When he staggers through the front door at half four, Xavier has attached a passive-aggressive note to the kettle telling him to keep the noise down because he’s studying for an exam. Adam stumbles into his bedroom, makes sure to slam the door as noisily as possible, and falls asleep fully dressed, the sound of Xavier calling him a fucking cunt through the adjoining wall ringing pleasantly in his ears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Camberwell, London, 2018**

Fergus takes an Ambien and sleeps the whole way back to London. Richard had wanted to accompany him to the airport, but Fergus had made excuses in order to avoid the inevitable, lopsided farewell beside the check-in desks. Richard would have been tender and sincere and expect to be kissed goodbye, and Fergus would have cringed, feeling like he was performing an embarrassing scene from a play.

Seven hours after tucking himself beneath an airline blanket and gulping down his sleeping pill, he’s awoken by a gentle hand on his shoulder and the the soft voice of a flight attendant telling him the plane is about to land and he needs to return his seat to the upright position. He takes in the attendant’s kind, preternaturally smooth, botoxed face and briefly imagines following him behind the blue curtain into the toilet cubicle. He’s still mostly asleep and his cock stirs against his thigh, but the attendant’s long fingers detach themselves from his shoulder and he retreats without a backwards glance in Fergus’ direction. Fergus shuffles about folding up his blanket, feeling vaguely foolish.

After he disembarks, he wanders through Terminal 5 in a drowsy trance, only distantly aware of the urgency of the contingent of passengers behind him hurrying for their connection to Kuala Lumpur. He finds himself at the back of the queue for passport control and doesn’t much mind; there’s a feeling of calm settling over him, now that he’s back on home soil. It’s ridiculous; he’s never been sentimental about the notion of ‘home’, but now that he’s here, a cab ride away from a house he hasn’t set foot in in two years, there’s a sense of being able to let down his guard. His shoulders are lowering, there’s something tight and anxious uncoiling in his chest. If he hadn’t noticed it lifting, he perhaps wouldn’t have realised he’d been feeling its weight in the first place.

He emerges from the terminal into a cold, dark night that smells of exhaust fumes and the vapour of the smokers huddled over a first, necessary cigarette in the lee of the terminal building. He wishes he were one of them. The interior of a black cab is familiar and reassuring, as is the gruff disinterest of the cabbie when Fergus gives him his address.

By the time the taxi pulls up outside the house, Fergus is dozing against the window. He’d surrendered to it halfway through the journey, vaguely horrified and embarrassed by the realisation that homesickness and exhaustion were conspiring to make him tearful at the sight of Hanger Lane gyratory, the North Circular made romantic by the glow of streetlights reflecting off wet tarmac. Adam would call him a twat for becoming so sentimental; apparently being back in London has resurrected the reflex for measuring all his reactions against the yardstick of Adam’s hypothetical disapproval. He overpays the cabbie and drags his suitcase onto the pavement, feeling cold and sick and miserable.

The house is silent and dark, its yellow front door impassive in the shadow of the streetlights, the front yard neglected and beset by weeds. The wheelie bins are tucked behind the hydrangea, the duck-egg number fifteen nearly worn away. The house looks unloved; it makes something within Fergus sink. He pushes it to one side and fishes in his rucksack for the set of keys he hasn’t had cause to use since he locked the front door behind him two years earlier, and hauls the suitcase through the creaking metal gate and up the tiled path.

The front door sticks, and then the smell hits him; it was one of the things he’d loved, when he and Adam came to look round, nearly a decade ago, and it had never left. A warm smell of incense and sandalwood. He’d tried to track down the source of it, finally identifying the interior of the cupboard which housed the gas meter as having been permeated by something fragrant and impossible to exorcise at some point during the previous owners’ tenure, and then he’d grown to like it. Adam had groused about it, like he’d groused about the garish colour scheme in the living room, but eventually he’d shut up about it, making only token complaint whenever he remembered he was supposed to hate it, like he didn’t want Fergus to think he was getting soft.

Fergus rubs a furious hand over his face. Fuck every fucking thing about being back here.

He leaves his suitcase unpacked at the foot of the stairs. When he tries the shower, it lets forth a burst of foul-smelling water that’s been standing in the pipes since the last tenants moved out, so he gives it up as a lost cause. He peels off his jumper and shirt, leaves his jeans in a heap at the foot of the bed, then realises his mistake. The house was let furnished, but the mattress is bare and there are no sheets in the airing cupboard. What did he do with them, when he left? He seems to remember throwing most things away and leaving the place sterile and empty for the tenants. He’s turned up in an empty house with a suitcase of clothes and no idea what to do until he can go to the Sainsbury’s superstore down the road in the morning and buy sheets and cutlery and all the things he hadn’t realised he didn’t own in England, anymore. Staying in the house while he arranges to put it on the market suddenly seems a deeply stupid idea.

In the end he rummages in his case for a pair of jogging bottoms and a t-shirt and retreats to the living room. He falls asleep curled in on himself and uncomfortable, his coat thrown over himself as a blanket, his head resting on the unforgiving arm of the sofa.

He wakes up shivering, his neck at an unnatural and agonising angle, to the sound of the bin lorry making its way down the street outside. He glares into the thin light filtering through the blinds and listens to the thumping of the bins being hoisted and tipped, the bin men’s indistinct conversation, the thrum of the lorry’s engine as it retreats and turns the corner onto the next road.

His first task is trying to remember how to coax the boiler into firing up the central heating, then remembering into which pocket of his suitcase he’d packed his phone charger. There’s a message from Richard waiting for him, when the phone blinks into life.

_How was the flight?_

The sense of hopelessness from the previous night rushes over him again. What the fuck was he thinking, deciding running back to London was the solution to the fucking mess he’s made of his life in New York? He doesn’t even own a fucking kettle. The thought of rattling around in this empty house, surviving on microwave meals until he manages to make a series of decisions he could perfectly well have made from the safety and security of the other side of the Atlantic, makes him want to punch himself in the face for his stupidity.

 _Fine,_ he replies. He wonders whether to tell Richard that he hates it, now he’s back; whether to try to explain how foolish and emotional he feels, but that would prompt a phone call and actually speaking to Richard is the very last thing he wants, on this already horrible morning. _I’ll call you this evening._

He flings his phone onto the sofa and decides there’s no avoiding the shower. He digs around in the suitcase again, extracts the towel he’s glad he had the foresight to pack in his slightly manic rush to escape from New York, and trudges up the stairs to do battle with the water pressure. _Welcome home_ , he thinks glumly, _you fucking idiot._

**London, 2003**

When Adam goes looking at flats, at the back of his mind is a list of requirements such as, ‘won’t make me look like Patrick Bateman if I invite someone back’ and ‘doesn’t require me to get in a lift’. The estate agent is unable to filter the options by these criteria, so he ends up cycling through a range of unsuitable, soulless bachelor pads and tower blocks before he alights on the pictures of East India Quay and knows, without even seeing it, that it’s a place he wouldn’t be absolutely appalled to find himself inhabiting.

He moves in on a Saturday, paying a company to pack the contents of the Lewisham flat into a van and unload them at the other end, at which point he realises the Lewisham flat had been much smaller than this open-plan, exposed-beamed warehouse conversion. His furniture floats shabbily in the middle of the living area, the two-seater sofa that had been perfectly adequate in Lewisham now ludicrously small.

The good news is, the _Mail_ is paying him enough to make a bank holiday weekend during which he traipses around the Wembley Ikea choosing corner sofas and a new kingsize bed a thing he can afford to do. By the time he’s accepted delivery, helped the harassed-looking driver carry the enormous boxes up the stairs, and assembled his new furniture, it no longer looks as though someone has tried to furnish the flat with the contents of a dolls’ house.

If it occurs to him to question how much self-loathing he must secretly be harbouring, to be working at the _Mail_ in the first place, the first night he spends spreadeagled across his vast, new memory-foam mattress is enough to silence his conscience for the time being. There isn’t time for self-loathing, anyway, once he’s actually behind his desk _;_ there’s barely time for pissing or eating lunch.

“I’m getting coffee, do you want anything?”

It’s 8 PM, and Adam has been staring at the screen over Kevin’s shoulder for forty-five minutes, watching him shuffle text boxes around the front page and wondering why Richard Murphy’s bland, beardy face has to be all over the first three pages of the morning edition. Controversial select committees are like tennis: the Great British public doesn’t give a shit until Wimbledon rolls around, for a fortnight everyone’s an expert on topspin serves, and then everyone goes back to not giving a shit again for the other fifty weeks of the year.

“We’re going to have to do a profile,” Angela had said, in that morning’s editorial meeting. “All of a sudden he’s on the news, and no one knows who he is.”

Dennis, whose tenure as Night Editor had made him a veteran of Select Committee hearings that briefly made the headlines, rolled his eyes extravagantly. “That’s because there’s nothing interesting to know about him.”

“Yeah, fuck all to know about him, other than the fact he’s been in Iraq inspecting the fucking WMDs, the Nobel committee’s taking an interest and he’s being tipped to show up on the Honours list.”

“Fuck off, Adam.”

As usual, the matter had been settled by Dacre marching in and calling them all cunts, and then singling each of them out for an itemised list of all the ways in which they’d been cunts in the preceding twenty four hours. Not for nothing was the morning briefing known as the Vagina Monologues.

Friday is his day off, thank Christ. His only commitments tomorrow are to sleeping through the hours of daylight and dragging himself across town to Paddington in the evening to meet Fergus. It says something unflattering about Adam’s existence that the highlight of his week is a terrible game of squash against a man whose lack of sporting ability is matched only by his aggressive thirst for gloating, unsportsmanlike victory.

“Adam! D’you want a coffee, or not?”

“Yeah,” he replies absent-mindedly. To Kevin, he says, “Flip it again.”

Ten minutes later, Angela reappears and shoves a hot Starbucks takeaway cup into Adam’s hand. He sips at it while Kevin fucks about with the aspect ratio of Murphy’s head, as though that will make it less irritating to look at. Angela has put down the rest of the coffees to grab her desk phone, and Adam only realises she wants his attention when she picks up a packet of sugar and hurls it at him.

“Fucking hell, what?”

Angela has her hand over the receiver. “Murphy’s missing.”

“What?”

“Murphy’s _missing_. Thames Valley are out looking for him.”

Adam hurries over and gestures frantically at the phone, which Angela hands over. “Adam Kenyon. Sources?”

The voice at the other end of the line is one Adam vaguely recognises as belonging to one of Angela’s dodgy police contacts. “Plod at the Abingdon station. They’ve got a search out. Helicopters, dogs _._ ”

“Cadaver dogs?”

“Didn’t say _._ ”

Adam hands the phone back to Angela and turns to survey the newsroom. If they bump the coverage of the select committee and go with the fact Murphy’s missing, and it turns out he’s just taken himself off to the garden shed for the evening with a bottle of whisky and a grubby magazine, they’ll be fucked.

“Kevin! Bump it to page two.”

“I’ve just got his fucking head right -”

“Bump it! Angela -” Angela is still talking to her contact. “Get off the fucking phone! Get _on the phone_ to someone who knows what’s going on! That fucker from MI6 -”

“He won’t talk to us.”

“Offer him something he can’t resist. Say you’ll dress up as a fucking Teletubby and wank him off, if that’s what he wants.”

Angela is already flicking through her Filofax in search of the number.

Two hours later, the police find the body. When Adam gets home, it’s gone eight in the morning and he’s been awake for twenty five and a half hours. He has a long shower to sluice off the Pro Plus-induced sweat and crawls into bed just after nine, having eaten a banana and checked his emails one last time.

He’s woken some innumerable hours later by his phone vibrating on the bedside table. Cursing himself, because he should have turned notifications off instead of just silencing them, he peers at the name scrolling across the screen before he presses it to his ear.

“Hi, it’s Fergus _._ ”

“I know that, you berk. What’s up?”

“I’m going to have to cancel squash. Are you asleep?”

“I was.” Adam scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck’s sake, Ferg. I can probably move the booking for the court.”

“I won’t be around for a while. Being deployed next week.”

“Deployed?” Adam reaches over to turn on the bedside lamp. “Where?”

“To Iraq.” Fergus sounds irritated. “Where the fuck d’you think?”

Fuck. Adam had absentmindedly assumed that Fergus was just being an enormous fucking twat about being sent away on a business trip. Deployed. “Fuck.”

“Sums it up.” There’s a hesitancy behind Fergus’ words that makes Adam think he’d rung in search of a more involved conversation than reporting the need to cancel the squash. “Anyway, probably best to find a new partner.”

“Fuck off,” Adam says, without thinking. “You’ll be back in… how long?”

“It’s a six-month tour.”

“Right, well. Six months, then.” He wants to ask for details, about where Fergus will be posted and what he’ll be doing, but he wonders whether Fergus would even be allowed to tell him. “Signals. Could be worse.”

“Thanks,” Fergus says, with an audible scowl. “See you in six months, then.”

“Wait.” Adam flounders for how to express what he wants to, which is something reassuring without being trite. “Look after yourself.”

Fergus snorts. “Yeah. Bye.”


	5. Chapter 5

**London, 2004**

Adam is having a fucking incredible night. He’s drunk, he’s high, he’s just broken the biggest story of his career, and he and the entire editorial team are out celebrating his promotion. He’s Night Editor in his own right, now; the youngest the _Mail_ ’s ever had. From here to Downing Street, by way of being made Political Editor, and then a sideways move into the Comms Office: the path ahead is clear.

“To Adam’s leaky friend!” cries George, to a chorus of agreement and clinking of glasses. “And for once, I don’t mean Angela!”

“Fuck off, you dickhead.” Angela knocks her glass against Adam’s and tips her head in the direction of the exit. “I’m off to meet my man,” she shouts in his ear.

“Who the fuck is he? He’s either fuck ugly or a fucking spad wanker from Victoria Street, if you’re this ashamed of him.”

Angela looks shifty and takes a long sip of her drink.

“Fuck’s sake, not one of the new bunch of Labour embryos?”

Angela picks up her bag, ready to depart. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

“You’d better hope he’s useful!”

She sticks two fingers up at him over her shoulder and pushes her way through the crowd.

“So, d’you want those tickets?” Kevin bellows in his ear.

“What?”

“The tickets. Six Nations. I can’t fucking use them, so you’d be doing me a favour.”

“Cool,” shouts Adam. “Yeah.”

He’s about to knock back the last of his champagne and head for the loos, when he catches the eye of a woman who’s standing with her friends by the bar. She’s petite and pretty, short dark hair tucked behind one ear, and she’s smirking at him like she knows exactly what his next move will be. What the hell. He’s feeling invincible, and he doesn’t like to disappoint.

He shakes off Kevin and walks over. Her friends melt away with sly grins in his direction. It’s perfect; an easy shot.

“Adam. And you are?”

“Alison. Most people call me Ali.”

“Ali,” Adam says slowly, with a smile. “Do you want a drink?”

An hour and a half later, Adam finds himself up against the wall of Ali’s tiny bedsit near Borough Market, while she sucks his tongue into her mouth and unzips his trousers with slim, nimble fingers.

She reaches into his boxers and wraps a hand around him. “Have you got anything?”

He nods, reaching for his wallet. He fishes out a condom and she takes it from him and laughs.

“I meant anything to take.”

Adam has nothing on him; he’d done a couple of lines earlier, but they’d been supplied by George to help him celebrate the new job. Ali smiles, then disappears in the direction of the bathroom. He follows, watches her extract a bag from the medicine cabinet and tap out a couple of lines onto the glass shelf above the sink.

“Just to take the edge off,” she says, before she cuts it.

He fucks her while she perches on the edge of the sink, and then again on her bed, where she rides him until he’s about to come and then slides off and finishes him off with her mouth; they haven’t bothered with the condom. He knows he’ll feel like a twat about it in the morning, but in the moment, with her hovering above him, hissing at him to go faster, he absolutely doesn’t care. Invincible.

She heads into the bathroom afterwards and glances at him over her shoulder. “You can stay.”

He falls asleep face down in her Cath Kidston pillows.

The next morning, he makes a swift exit, avoiding any possibility of conversation. Ali pats him on the arse as he gets out of bed. She doesn’t say that she wants his number and doesn’t offer her own, and Adam escapes into the cool early morning just after dawn. He’s hungry and hungover and knows a bastard of a comedown is hovering on the horizon; he also feels like he could jump into the air and click his heels together, like a child actor in Oliver!, because life is fucking perfect for once.

He nearly gets run over by a cyclist crossing the road opposite the Tube station without looking and gets sworn at for his trouble. On his way into the station, he picks up a Metro from the bundle just being unwrapped. It’s the sixteenth; there’s a reason the sixteenth should be important, but he can’t remember why and he doesn’t want to think about it too hard in case it pushes him over the precipice of the comedown too early.

It’s only that afternoon, hunched on the sofa and feeling like he wants to crawl under his duvet and never resurface, that he realises today’s the day Fergus gets back from Iraq. Well, Kuwait. He never got as far as crossing the border, and spent his whole tour embroiled in keeping logistics and communications running in some obscure manner; Adam isn’t clear on the specifics, because there have been aspects of his work that Fergus isn’t permitted to share via the occasional email with his erstwhile squash partner. If it’s strange that Fergus has been emailing him at all, Adam hasn’t bothered to dwell on it.

He decides to call the following week, after a long shift at the Night Desk, when he’s tired and pissed off and the walls of the flat are starting to feel a little bit too small.

He waits until it rings out, but ends the call before he’s given the option to leave a message. He’s wondering whether or not he feels disappointed, when the phone vibrates in his hand and he realises Fergus is calling him back.

“Sorry.” Fergus is breathing heavily. “Out with the dogs.”

Adam is bemused. “Dogs?”

“I’m at Mum’s. Staying for the week, and then I’m back to work.”

There’s a pause, during which Adam listens to the distant sound of Fergus’ laboured breath and a dog yapping in excitement. “Bugger off, Bella,” says Fergus, presumably to the dog.

Adam snorts. “How are you, then?”

“Oh, don’t fucking start with that. I didn’t even see any action.”

“More than I needed to know.”

“Fuck off. Did see some of that, actually.”

“Didn’t know they let the goats into the barracks.”

“Fuck off,” says Fergus. “How are you, anyway?”

“Got the job.”

“Congratulations, you’re a slightly more important, more highly paid swivel-eyed cunt.”

“Cheers. Anyway, do you want to go to the rugby? I’ve got tickets for the Six Nations at Twickenham.”

“The rugby.”

“Yes, you twat, the rugby. England-Ireland, 6th of March.”

“Why would I want to go to the rugby?”

“Oh, I don’t know? Because someone’s offering you a free ticket, and we can go to the pub afterwards, and I’ll buy you a nice dinner to say well done for coming home with the requisite number of limbs.”

Fergus snorts. “Fine. I’m holding you to dinner, though. I fucking hate rugby.”

Two weeks later, Adam and Fergus are sitting in the stands at Twickenham watching England lose a game of some of the worst rugby Adam has ever had the misfortune to witness, and he went to a prep school at which boys were expected to play before they’d learned to spell their own names.

“I fucking hate rugby,” Fergus mutters, tucking his hands further into his armpits. His nose is bright red and he’s scowling at the pitch as though he wishes he could make the players’ heads explode through the sheer force of his antipathy.

“So you’ve said.”

“Well, it bears repeating.”

Far below them, Ben Cohen takes the ball over the line and the crowd rises to its feet, only for the video referee to disallow the try. Adam sits down with a sigh. “D’you want to fuck off to the pub, then?”

Fergus eyes him dubiously. “Really?”

“We’re not going to come back from this,” Adam says, meaning the score. “Might as well get out ahead of the crowd.”

“Thank Christ. I’m fucking freezing.”

They make their way down the stand and through the stadium towards the street, and Fergus grouses the entire way about the fact that with football, at least, he can pretend to fake an interest. Adam holds back a barbed comment noting his surprise that Fergus is in no way enamoured of a field full of men grappling with each other while wearing shorts, because there are some things Fergus will weather and some that will make him crimson and venomous and cannot be taken back.

Thankfully, there’s a pub on the way back to Strawberry Hill that’s serving food and has a free table, so Fergus lays claim to it while Adam goes to the bar to fetch them pints and a couple of menus. The rugby’s still playing on a screen above the bar, but Adam ignores it and heads back to the table, glasses in hand, with the menus tucked under his arm.

“Cheers.”

Fergus looks pleased to be somewhere warm enough for him to take off his coat. His hair’s grown out of what must have been a severe, close-cropped cut while he was away, and it’s curling over his forehead making him look slightly ridiculous and embarrassingly young. “I’ve resigned my commission,” he says, out of nowhere.

Adam is startled out of his contemplation of the terrible haircut. “What?”

“I’m leaving the Reserves. Should be out by Easter.”

As far as Adam’s concerned, and he means this fondly, Fergus is exactly the sort of officious, snobbish arsehole he always imagined would greatly enjoy playing war games a few weekends a year. Iraq should have suited him. The impression Adam had got from the emails they’d exchanged, was that Fergus was thriving in an environment in which he had the right to issue, and faced the obligation to obey orders without question. It seemed to have brought him an air of tranquility, the narrowing of his life to a few simple prerequisites.

“Why?”

Fergus’ mouth twists and he turns his pint glass in the ring of condensation that’s formed at its base. “Why does anyone do anything?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Well, I didn’t think I’d have to fucking justify it.” He’s frowning, and he’s still twisting the pint glass, making the circle of moisture on the tabletop larger with every rotation.

“Don’t, then.” Adam shrugs, glancing down the menu. “Not on my account.”

Fergus says nothing for a long moment, and when Adam looks up at him he finds Fergus blinking at him in something that looks like it might be gratitude. He wonders briefly how many times Fergus has had to have a similar conversation with his mum, since he returned home.

“What are you having?” he says, to break the odd atmosphere, because Fergus looks like he might attempt to talk about something too heavy for a shitty pub in Twickenham on a Saturday afternoon.

“I don’t fucking know.” Fergus frowns at his menu. “The most expensive thing they do. Compensation for an hour and a half standing about freezing my balls off.”

**London, 2008**

Adam is sacked over the phone, three days after he publishes a double-page spread that makes the entire Parliamentary Labour Party look like the bunch of incompetents they fucking well are. It isn’t a surprise. In Wednesday’s editorial meeting, Dacre had turned his wrath on he and Angela like a heat-seeking missile, and Adam had taken the foolish path of attempting to stand his ground, while Angela had had the sense to grovel and then slink away to lick her wounds in private.

“You fucked everybody,” Dacre had shouted in Adam’s face, purple and bristling with rage. “What’s the fucking point in fucking _everybody_?”

“They all deserved to be fucked. Why are we still trying to keep up the Emperor’s new clothes bullshit about Dan fucking Miller? He’s the walking embodiment of a political vacuum!”

“Because he’s useful, you little turd! You stick to the editorial line, or you can fuck off, you cunt!”

The call comes the next morning, an hour before he’s due in. He listens, offers only a token argument, and then stares at the ceiling of his bedroom for an hour, wondering what the fuck he’s going to do next. So much for the fucking road-to-Downing-Street masterplan.

By mid-afternoon, he’s hunched over a vat of coffee calling in every favour he’s ever accrued, listening to contact after contact squirm while he attempts to beg for a job without making it obvious that’s what he’s up to. The _Evening Standard_ was a no-go automatically, because he’ll be persona non grata at Northcliffe House, by now; the _Independent_ can fuck right off, anyway, and he’d rather be on the game than at the _Metro._

By the time it’s looking like selling his arse for fifty quid might be his best option, after all, Adam’s tired of abasing himself. At least he’ll get a pay-out from DMG, so he needn’t worry about the rent for a couple of months.

Fuck it. He showers, makes sure he’s clean, puts on a decent shirt, and goes out to a bar no one he knows is likely to frequent. Two lines of coke and a number of shots with strangers later, he’s on his back on someone else’s mattress, letting some chinless hedge-fund tosser gabble incoherent, homophobic things at him while he fucks him. It’s the worst sex he’s had in a long time, and by the time the dickhead’s pulled out and tied off the condom, Adam’s wishing he could be anywhere else. The wanker asks him for his number, tries somewhat less than politely to kiss him as he leaves, and Adam punches him just for the satisfaction of knowing the twat’ll have to walk into the office on Monday morning and explain away the black eye. He staggers off to find a taxi, shaking the ache out of his knuckles, feeling a thousand times worse than he had before he’d begun the entire endeavour.

His mum calls that evening, for their fortnightly conversation in which she gives him an account of the transactions of a series of friends of hers he’s never met and updates him on Katie’s job, like he couldn’t speak to his own sister himself, if he were so inclined.

Halfway through a story about Marjorie at the choir’s rudeness over the election for the new treasurer, she pauses.“What’s the matter? You don’t sound well.”

“Lost my job.”

“Oh, Adam.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got to go, anyway.”

“Your father will want to speak to you.”

“Well, I haven’t got time - bye.”

He puts down the phone and seethes for a few minutes, wondering viciously why Katie can’t ever do him a favour and be the disappointment for once. Maybe Adam should sabotage the wedding just so Mum’s disapproval can alight on her for a change: he cycles through a range of options, but too many of them involve seducing Katie’s repulsive, weak-willed fiancé, and Adam’s self-hatred hasn’t quite sunk to those depths yet, thanks very much.

Later, he’ll wonder whether it’s coincidence that Fergus rings him that weekend to bitch about his job, or simply the alignment of the planets. nPower’s green energy strategy is a propaganda effort so shambolic and empty it makes the Wizard of Oz look like Josef Goebbels, according to Fergus. Behind the curtain, which Fergus is in charge of keeping closed, there’s a wizened old man pissing onto a huge fossil fuel inferno.

In this mood, Fergus is gloriously, self-righteously vindictive. “I can’t fucking stay there. I’m wasting my fucking life.”

Listening to him is a balm to Adam’s stinging pride, so he eggs him on, until Fergus is cataloguing the many ways in which his colleagues are a bunch of petty-minded, ignorant cunts and Adam is basking in his rage, feeling soothed by it, vindicated.

Fergus subsides, eventually, into a tone much more earnest and miserable. “I want to do something that fucking matters.”

“Nothing fucking does, though.”

“Alright, fuck off, Nietzsche.” There’s a pause, and Adam stares in silence at the Bahrain Grand Prix, which he’s muted in order to listen to Fergus’ vitriol. “Fuck it,” Fergus says, then. “Want to help me get into politics?”

They meet up in a pub in Paddington three days later, by which time Adam has already put his knowledge and contacts to work and come up with a workable, plausible plan for how they can get Fergus into a seat. It’ll be a fucking long shot; it’ll mean cosying up to the _Orange Book_ cabal and hoping they can find a seat desperate enough for a credible candidate that they’ll mistake Fergus for one; it’ll mean riding the wave of the PLP eating itself and positioning Fergus as someone with principles enough to appeal to the civil-liberties, anti-war student brigade, while simultaneously bland and unthreatening enough not to ruffle the feathers of the Gladstonian old guard.

Adam puts a pint down in front of Fergus and slides into the seat on the opposite side of the booth.

“We’re doing this, then,” Fergus says.

“We’re doing this.”

Fergus knocks their glasses together.

Adam gets the paperwork spread out where they can both see it. They’ve already hashed out the general approach: getting Fergus approved by the Party and applying for a seat. “Right. Two conditions: one, I have total oversight on strategy; two, complete honesty.”

This, Fergus was clearly not expecting. He eyes Adam dubiously. “With the electorate?”

“Fuck, no. With me. I can do this; _we_ can do this, but not if you’re keeping secrets that I might conceivably have to answer embarrassing questions about, later. So, if there’s anything, any skeletons whatsoever, you need to tell me now.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. I don’t give a shit who you’ve fucked, or what you got up to when you were an undergrad, but I need to know about it in advance.”

Fergus gives it a moment's consideration. “Nope, there’s nothing.”

“That was a remarkably swift response for someone claiming to want to go into politics. Take your time.”

“No, genuinely. There’s nothing.”

“No hookers and blow? No pictures of you dressed up as a Nazi?”

“None.”

Of course, Fergus being Fergus, Adam watches him visibly begin to panic. He’s going pink, looking as though he’s walking through customs with a couple of kilograms of hash in his hand luggage.

“I don’t need to know about the wet dream you had in 1993 about Michael Heseltine,” Adam reassures him, rolling his eyes. “Only things that are fucking relevant.”

“Fuck you. And it was Geoffrey Howe giving his resignation speech.”

“I’ll make sure no one finds out that cricketing metaphors make you pop a stiffy.”

Fergus takes a drink and eyes Adam with an expression a little too candid for his liking. “What about all the other things that might make people think I’m a twat?”

“You are a twat. It’s about minimising voters’ exposure to the bits of you that make it obvious.”

“Great,” says Fergus. “Why not just stick a hand up my arse and practice your ventriloquist’s act?”

“Look, alright. Twenty questions: I’ll give you a topic, you say the first thing that comes to mind. I’ll tell you which bits of it make you sound like a wanker.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.”

“Alright, I’ll tell you if any of it makes you sound unelectable. Your being a wanker can just be assumed.”

Fergus grins, despite himself.

**Norwich, 2010**

Norwich South should, by all rights, be an absolute cake walk. They’ve thrown key issues back and forth between them so often they’ve become ingrained on Fergus’ soul, a mantra he’ll mutter on his deathbed when he looks back over the moments that have shaped his life: _civil liberties, boom and bust, everyone’s still really fucking angry about Iraq, don’t mention Europe unless you have to, tuition fees._

Colin Cooper is an incumbent so rabidly unpopular with the students of the university which makes up half the constituency that he’s started to shit bricks whenever anyone below the age of thirty makes eye contact with him in public. Fergus, meanwhile, has taken to attending as many university-affiliated hustings events as he possibly can, letting Liberal Youth treat him like a celebrity and making stirring speeches about the immorality of locking children up in immigration detention centres.

Meanwhile, the constituency party, with its loyal and long-serving bevy of local councillors, has taken Fergus in as one of its own with an ease that suggests they’re much savvier than they generally let on. Fergus may be a brash, charmless incomer with as much experience of local government as a teaspoon, but he’s their best bet at getting a Lib Dem into real power, and the prospect of genuine influence in Westminster has made Fergus their new best friend. Adam hasn’t seen the benefit of explaining this to Fergus, who is merrily swanning about under the misapprehension that everyone shares his opinion that he’s the dog’s bollocks.

All in all, things are going swimmingly, until Fergus storms into the constituency office one morning in April brandishing a red, white and blue leaflet, looking like he’s ten seconds from smashing a table over someone’s head. “Have you fucking seen this?”

He flings it at Adam, who peers at it half-heartedly, exhausted by a third re-write of Fergus’ speech for the hustings on Thursday. “What now?”

“That dickless shithead is sounding off about me being in Iraq! He’s trying to make me look like a middle-class, imperialist wanker in front of the students! _And_ he’s saying I was lying about being on active duty when we spoke to those wankers at the Town Hall - they’ve put in a bit about my service record, only being in Kuwait -“

“Well, I mean, you are a middle-class wanker, but that’s fucking stupid of them on a number of levels.” Adam flicks the leaflet over to scrutinise the paragraph to which Fergus is referring.

“What?” Fergus, the wind taken out of his sails, flops into a plastic chair on the other side of the table. “Why?”

“One, it’s not a good look trying to undermine an ex-serviceman - don’t pull that face, if they’re playing on it, so will we - two, it makes them look petty. Three, the students will fucking lap it up if you go all Joan of Arc about being sent out there to take part in an illegal war and resigning your commission in protest.”

“Oh, fuck off, I’m not saying that -“

Adam shrugs. “Cooper doesn’t have many scruples about the bullshit he’s spouting.”

Carole, local councillor and all-round stalwart of the constituency campaign, walks past them with a stack of their own leaflets and casts an eye over the flyer in Adam’s hand. She smiles at them sharply. “Bloody disgusting, undermining the reputation of someone who’s fought for Queen and country like that. Makes you wonder whether he’ll have the balls to say it your face, doesn’t it?”

Carole terrifies Adam; he’s eternally grateful she’s taken to Fergus the way she has. He’s an awkward sell at the best of times, particularly to women with whom he actually has to make conversation, but Carole seems unfazed by his awkwardness and occasional, foot-in-mouthed misogyny, or is at least willing to overlook it, while Fergus proves expedient.

“Exactly,” he agrees.

“Better re-write that hustings speech again, then,” says Fergus with a spiteful smile in Adam’s direction.

The night before the election, Fergus and Adam hole up in Adam’s hotel room to go over the last minute polls and run through the battle plan. There’s camaraderie in it, a fevered sense of being united against the twin evils of Colin Cooper and any party being able to form a majority government, and the atmosphere goes to their heads, a little.

“We’re the disruptors,” Fergus crows, having made his way through three tiny bottles from the mini bar. “We’re going to fuck their shit up.”

“Fuck, yeah,” says Adam, fist-bumping him, giving not one shit that they sounds like wankers. “No fucking surrender!”

By two AM the following night, he’s regretting their free hand with the miniature vodka and their optimism. Things are not looking good, nationally. The fever Michael is supposed to have whipped up amongst the young and nubile has failed to materialise, and the Labour front bench has failed to be decapitated. Portillo moments have been few and far between.

At the Town Hall, Cooper, that smug, beardy twat, is starting to look like his need for a new pair of trousers is diminishing by the second. Carole, the councillors, and the enthusiastic rabble of Liberal Youth students they rounded up for last-minute canvassing are starting to eye each other nervously, wondering whether throwing their support behind Fergus, who is green around the gills and sweating copiously under the Hall’s unflattering fluorescent lights, was a good idea, after all.

“What’re those wankers looking so smug about?” Fergus mutters, when a cheer goes up from the huddle of Tories in the corner.

Sam, one of the students, is on his way past with a stack of folding chairs. “Guildford’s gone to them.”

“Why the fuck does he know that before I do?” Fergus demands furiously, the moment he’s gone.

Adam has one eye on Cooper and wishes Fergus would pick this moment to master the art of plastering on a fucking smile. “Calm down.”

“You fucking calm down, I’m going for a smoke.”

“Not where -”

Fergus waves a hand at him over his shoulder, “Not where there are cameras, I know.”

He traipses back fifteen minutes later smelling of cigarettes and clutching two polystyrene cups of coffee.

Adam accepts one of them gratefully. “Labour have held Durham.”

“This is shaping up to be the most humiliating episode of my entire fucking existence.”

Adam glances at him. “We knew it was a long shot.”

“Stop fucking saying that! What happened to ‘no fucking surrender’?”

Adam has no useful reply to make, so he sips his coffee and checks his phone again. Michael is yet to make a statement; he wishes he were privy to something approaching actual news from party HQ.

At ten to five, there’s a murmur in the hall, and the drooping students perk up a bit as the returning officer makes her way onto the stage.

“Oh, fuck,” mutters Fergus. “Oh, fuck. This is it, this is it.”

“Of course this is fucking it.” Adam tugs the can of Red Bull out of his hand and hands it to the nearest councillor. He fastens the top button of Fergus’ shirt and tugs the tie he’d loosened on his second trip outside for a fag into something resembling a double Windsor. Fergus stares at him, sweaty and frowning, and Adam shakes him a little. “We’ve had a good run. Don’t be a twat now.”

Fergus nods and appears to swallow whatever it was that he’d been intending to say. He marches up to the stage on the heels of the other candidates. Mounting the steps, he’s wearing the expression of a man attending his own funeral.

Watching him up there, swaying a little from exhaustion, still greenish-grey under the unforgiving lights, Adam suffers a sweep of nausea, knowing that this is the moment in which his and Fergus’ lives will change forever, for better or worse. He’s spent the past eighteen months masterminding every aspect of their campaign and now there’s absolutely fuck all he can do to control the outcome. It makes him want to grab Fergus and tell him it’s all been a horrible mistake, and he should just go and beg nPower for his miserable job back. He isn’t used to nerves, anymore; certainly not on anyone else’s behalf.

The returning officer clears her throat. “I, Bernadette Shanklin, acting returning officer, hereby give notice that the total number of votes cast for candidates in the Norwich South constituency is as follows: Cooper, Colin, the Labour Party: 13,650.”

Fergus looks at him helplessly as a ripple passes through the room. It’s far too close to call; they’ll have to get through all the no-hopers before they have any idea whether Fergus has beaten him.

The declaration continues. The BNP and the Workers’ Revolutionary Party candidates lose their deposits; neither seems terribly surprised. The Greens make a decent showing, and the Conservatives pass ten thousand but can’t challenge Cooper. _Fucking hell_ , Adam thinks, staring at Fergus’ pale, sweaty face, _it’ll be down to a few hundred either way_.

“Williams, Fergus, the Liberal Democrats: 13, 960.”

There’s a sound like a jet engine taking off as the hall erupts into noise: the students behind him are screaming, Carole has seized his hand and is shaking it ferociously. Up on the stage, Fergus looks as though he’s about to be sick.

“The total number of ballot papers rejected was ninety four; the election turnout was sixty four percent. I hereby declare that Fergus Williams has been duly elected as Member of Parliament for Norwich South.”

Fergus is still staring at him, so Adam mouths, _Give the speech, you moron_!

Watching Fergus give a victory speech Adam wrote for him is the closest Adam has felt to proud of himself at any point in the last five years.

The candidates stumble off the stage and Fergus is grabbed by the BBC. He garbles something to camera that no doubt falls short of the statesmanlike grace in victory that Adam would have liked him to display.

Carole approaches, kissing him on the cheek. “Well done, Adam. See you both back at the Office?”

“Of course. See you there.”

He turns back to keep an eye on Fergus’ interview to find that the BBC have moved on to kicking Cooper while he’s down, and Fergus, looking shell-shocked and sickly, is making his way in Adam’s direction. He accepts a handshake from the Green candidate, who’s been thoroughly decent the whole way through the campaign, and then shuffles to a stop just out of Adam’s reach, a grin unfurling across his face.

He puts out a hand, the tosser, which Adam ignores in favour of hauling him into a hug. Fergus laughs, his face warm and sweaty against Adam’s neck for the briefest moment. “We fucking did it!”

“We fucking did,” Adam agrees, astonished.

By six thirty, the faithful have departed, clapping he and Fergus on the back and making promises about looking forward to shaping a bright new future, as soon as their hangovers have worn off. All Adam wants to do is go to bed, but he’s been running on Red Bull all night and sleep will be a long time coming.

Carole pauses on her way out, indicating the pizza boxes and used plastic cups that are scattered across the trestle tables. “Leave the mess, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.” She hands Adam a set of keys. “Drop them back through the letterbox; I’ve got a spare.”

“Will do. Thanks, Carole.”

“No,” she says firmly, and he suffers the horrifying thought that she might be about to pinch his cheek like a tipsy maiden aunt. She settles for taking him by the hand and shaking it. She smiles at Fergus, too, who is slumped in a dazed heap at the table behind him. “Thank you. Now, if you two can avoid fucking it up, we’ve actually got a chance of holding those bastards to account. Night.”

They watch her go, and Fergus allows his head to hit the table, letting out a heartfelt groan of exhaustion.

“Fuck. I need to sleep for a thousand years.”

Adam stretches out his legs below the table. “You’ve got Radio Norwich in two hours, then we need to get back to Westminster. The BBC want you doing a piece for Andrew Marr with Angela and Sami; new Lib Dems on the block, face of the yellow revolution.”

Fergus lifts his head, looking vaguely nauseated. “I need a shower.”

“I’ll get us a taxi.”

On the way back to the hotel, Fergus starts rambling about what it will be like, to stroll the corridors of power. Adam is mostly looking forward to the opportunity to visit justice upon those who crossed him at the _Mail_. The thought of bullying Ollie Reeder until he’s a sobbing smear on the floor of the Lobby is the only motivation he’ll need to get Fergus a seat at the table.

“What do you think?” Fergus is gazing out of the window at the gentle dawn that is breaking over Norwich. “Is there any chance of getting me onto a Select Committee? Should I push for Energy and Climate Change?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of pushing for anything. These things tend to be bestowed.”

“So, I just have to wait and see what Little Saint Michael has in his sack? What about all the work we put in with the anti-airport lot? If it’s a question of expertise, then if anything I’m overqualified.”

Adam looks up from his phone. “Come on, talk about a conflict of interest. Straight out of the Big Six, into Energy and Climate?”

“So I’m supposed to be punished for having had a real job at some point, because I might make the PPE brigade feel insecure?”

“Alright, Che Guevara. Having been a PR exec. for an energy giant isn’t exactly an asset to your credibility.”

Fergus stabs an indignant finger in the air. “And that’s the problem with identity politics, right there.”

“Are you about to play the ‘middle-class white men are the true victims of modern society’ card?”

Fergus scowls, turning his attention back to the window. “I’m suddenly not relishing the prospect of having to spend the next five years lying by omission about where I went to school.”

“Well, unlike JB, you need to at least pretend to be a man of the fucking people.”

“By pretending to like Greggs pasties and music with swearing in it.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Jesus, no wonder the PR gig ended so well. Manage your expectations, alright? We’re the new kids, and no one at the Party knows what the fuck’s going on until Tom and Michael get their dicks out and wank out a coalition agreement.”

Fergus takes this in for a moment, and then says, in a tone of heartfelt sincerity, “I’m shattered. Completely fucking exhausted.”

“You can sleep on the train.”

Fergus nods heavily and sinks into silence while Adam scrolls through his emails to respond to requests for interviews, eyes firmly on his phone until the taxi pulls up outside the hotel.

**London, 2010** ****

Fergus has been complaining for the past fifteen minutes about the impossibility of travelling between Reading and Norwich by train and the need for him to live closer to Westminster.

Adam pauses, frustrated, in his attempt to compose an email to the Whip’s Office. “It’d make more sense to get a flat in the constituency and commute.”

“That’s for people with families,” Fergus says, dismissively. “Anyway, I’ve lived in fucking Reading for nearly a decade; if you make me move to East Anglia, I’ll have you killed. I know people, from the army.” There’s a look in his eye which tells Adam not to push it, this time.

The upshot of this, somehow, is Adam spending his next free weekend in the midst of a pack of sharp-elbowed middle class house-hunters, who have been following one another from one open-house viewing to another all afternoon, tussling like sharks who’ve scented blood.

“Stop fucking whinging,” Fergus hisses, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, do I?”

The dark-haired woman who trod on Adam’s foot in the kitchen of a dingy basement flat in Islington two properties ago is making it clear from her stance in the doorway that she thinks they’ve spent more than a reasonable amount of time inspecting the bathroom.

“And I do?” Adam glares at her until she fucks off in the direction of the spare bedroom. “Will you stop pretending you know which direction the windows are facing, like that makes a fucking difference? This isn’t _Location, Location, Location_ ; you’re not on the hunt for your fucking forever home.”

“Well, I’m terribly sorry I want to live somewhere for the next five years that doesn’t actively make me want to slit my wrists.”

The estate agent looks as fucked off with the day as Adam feels. He fixes them both with a look that suggests he has been struggling for some time to maintain a facade of good manners and cheer. “How are you finding the property, gentlemen?”

“Well, it’s got a roof and walls. Ticks all the fucking boxes for me.”

The estate agent glances between them. “I often find it’s easiest when one partner is open-minded about what they’re looking for.”

Fergus flushes an interesting shade of scarlet and Adam figures he deserves it for inflicting this hellish day upon him. He smiles in Fergus’ direction. “It’s usually you who’s the open-minded one, isn’t it, sweetheart? Positively fucking flexible, most of the time.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Fergus snaps, when the estate agent has beaten a hasty retreat. “What if someone fucking recognises me?”

“Did you, or did you not, get me here under false pretences? You’ve been reading some bullshit in the _Times_ magazine about couples getting first pick of viewings.”

Fergus looks shifty. “Fuck off, I have not.”

“I could be having my toenails peeled off, and I’d be having a more enjoyable Saturday afternoon.”

“Look, they’re all shit, anyway, aren’t they, so it doesn’t fucking matter.” Fergus glances bleakly down the list of addresses and times he’s got scribbled on a crumpled piece of notepaper. “There’s one more, and then you can fuck off back to your weekend.”

The final house is in Camberwell, on a street of neat terraces lined with birch trees. According to Fergus’ scribbled list of appointments, they’re ten minutes early.

The agent is waiting in the front garden, a walled patch of neat paving stones with one enormous hydrangea taking up most of the space beneath the bay window. She’s on her phone and barely glances at them as she holds a hand over it. “Three o’clock? Door’s open, let me know if you have questions.”

Dismissed, Fergus shrugs and leads the way up the path towards the front door. It is, Adam can’t help but notice, painted an obnoxious shade of yellow.

“I’m keeping an open mind,” Fergus says through gritted teeth, before he can comment.

The door opens onto a hallway with a tiled terracotta floor. There’s sunlight filtering through the kitchen window at the back of the house, falling in warm lozenges across the tiles, and there’s a scent in the air of sandalwood and joss sticks.

“Smells like a fucking headshop.”

“Shut up.” Adam rolls his eyes and follows him inside.

The house is, objectively, hideous. The living room is painted a turquoise so vibrant Adam feels like he might be having a stroke; the bathroom, chartreuse. In the kitchen one wall is the colour of ripe oranges.

He opens the back door to survey a small, enclosed, paved garden. There’s a weather-beaten table in front of the kitchen window that looks like it was stolen twenty years ago from a pub beer garden, illuminated perfectly by the afternoon sun.

“South facing,” says Fergus, behind him, in besotted tones. 

Adam closes the back door and gets a proper look at the kitchen. “That’s a Bristol sink.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Adam has visited Fergus’ soulless, new-build townhouse in Reading often enough to know that Fergus was not being disingenuous when he pleaded ignorance in an effort to persuade Adam to come with him to the viewings. To Adam’s mind, the enormous ceramic basin in the kitchen looks impractical, whatever Kirstie and fucking Phil might have had to say about it. He has to admit, however, that there’s something welcoming and homely about the way the sun’s pouring in and dancing on the orange wall.

He busies himself with nosying about in cupboards and checking for damp while Fergus scurries off to talk to the estate agent, no doubt putting on the face he wears when he thinks he’s involved in top-level negotiation, but which actually just makes him look like he’s got a squint.

“She’s going to talk to the vendor,” Fergus reports when he rejoins Adam in the second bedroom. “See if they’ll take it off the market.”

Adam has been inspecting the airing cupboard. “There’s plenty of storage,” he says, because it’s the kind of thing one says about houses.

The sun is falling in stripes across Fergus’ face through the Venetian blinds. Suddenly, there’s something awkward about looming together beside someone else’s bed, in someone else’s house, with Fergus looking smug about having beaten the couples they’ve been bumping into all afternoon to the ownership of this objectively terrible property. Adam suspects there’s a reason no one else has been willing to pay the asking price for a tiny house with a bathroom the colour of a violent gastric disorder, but Fergus is gazing out at the back garden with an expression of immense satisfaction, so Adam keeps his opinions to himself, for once.

**Camberwell, London, 2018**

Fergus has been in London a month before he ventures up into the loft and surveys the storage boxes he left up there, tucked into the corner under the eaves, when he fled to the States.

It’s been a strange, tentative few weeks, with an initial feeling of unreality, as though he’s been here on holiday, replaced by a calm, pleasant sort of acceptance. He gave in after that first miserable night and took himself off to Sainsbury’s and acquired a set of bed sheets, a cheap, mean set of crockery for one, and a toaster and kettle that look and perform as though they’re made entirely of plastic. Since then, he’s been pottering around reacquainting himself with London, taking himself off for walks on Peckham Rye and making phone calls to the solicitor and the estate agent, in which he fails to commit to anything concrete, in terms of selling the house. Sleeping on the old, creaking-springed mattress and waking up with the weak November sun filtering through the Venetian blind has left him feeling rested and calm, in a way he hadn’t realised he’d been missing.

The first box, when he drags it towards him and peels off the packing tape, contains photograph albums. There’d been a whole cupboard full of them, when he’d cleared out Mum’s house, all labelled in his dad’s neat handwriting, an ascending row of Roman numerals inscribed on the spines in biro chronicling Fergus’ childhood and adolescence. Family holidays and birthdays, all painstakingly arrayed under peelable plastic film, annotated with the date they were taken and a note about the occasion. He remembers watching Dad do it, ensconced at the kitchen table with a stack of newly developed photos and a brand new album, purchased that morning at the camera shop on Royston high street. It had been his father’s only concession to sentimentality. He’d seemed so content, settled at the table with the cricket murmuring away on the radio, that Fergus had never wanted to disturb him; it had been easier to laugh at him with Mum and roll his eyes whenever Dad brought home another album and sat cataloguing the latest set of pictures of Fergus scowling at the camera, sunburned and grumpy on the pebbles of Southwold beach.

He pushes aside three boxes full of albums. He doesn’t know what on earth he’s going to do with them; he’s never experienced any inclination to open them up and go through them. The fact there’ll be no one to pass them onto is something he made his peace with years ago. He’d murmured to Mum, during a rare, tearful conversation the day after Dad’s funeral, that she probably oughtn’t get her hopes up about grandchildren. She’d patted him on the hand and then gone to make a pot of tea, and they’d said nothing more about it, even when she’d been fading in and out of dementia in the home and lucid so infrequently that Fergus probably could have been honest with her without fear that she’d have remembered any of it. 

The next box contains the photographs deemed too important to be put away in Dad’s albums: framed pictures of Fergus on his first day at Bishop’s Stortford, in a blazer whose sleeves reached all the way down to his fingertips; his graduation picture from Oxford, which Mum had kept on the mantelpiece from the moment she had it framed to the day the house was sold to put her in the care home. Beneath the graduation picture, there’s his mum’s scrapbook, which she’d filled with cuttings of articles about his election. Tucked between its pages is the rosette she’d kept from Election Day. He hadn’t even known she’d done it; it wasn’t like her to be sentimental, either, but he’d found it hidden in the top cupboard above the wardrobe, beside the hat she’d worn to his Great Aunt Amelia’s funeral, when he’d stood there with the black binliner clearing out things to go to the charity shop.

Fergus had thought he was in the right frame of mind to do this, looking forward to going through Mum’s belongings with a critical eye and jettisoning anything he didn’t feel the need to keep. Frustrated, he pushes the boxes back into their corner and gets out of the attic as quickly as he can, pushing the folding ladder up into the dark space in the spare room’s ceiling and closing the trap door behind him.

He trudges into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and sits down at the kitchen table to drink it, getting out his phone to scroll through his emails. There’s one from Richard, which he’s been ignoring for the past two days. Its subject line - _Vacation - summer 2019? -_ has him shuddering in horror and panicking glumly about the inevitability of having to let Richard down, and having no idea how to do it without feeling like the arsehole he one hundred percent, definitely is.

Another new email waits for him. He’s been ignoring it for a couple of days, too.

He takes a steadying mouthful of tea and hesitates with his finger hovering over Adam’s name. _For fuck’s sake_ , he knows Adam would say. _Grow a pair._

_Fergus,_

_The publisher doesn’t want me to do this, but I wanted to give you one more chance not to be a complete twat. Just tell me if there’s anything you want me to take out, alright?_

_Adam_

There’s a PDF document attached with a file name that’s string of letters and numbers. When he opens it, a note at the top of the first page reads _Proof copy - do not distribute_. ‘The Second Coming’, reads the title; Adam’s name appears beneath it.

He scrolls down and realises there are passages - entire pages, in some instances, highlighted in yellow. He pauses on one of them. It’s an account of the Party Conference in the autumn of 2012 and his own name leers at him from the page, amid a description of the Mannion harassment debacle; it’s the opening of a chapter in which Adam seems to be angrily skewering the Machiavellian efficiency of the Tory propaganda machine.

For a long, precipitous moment, Fergus hovers on the verge of deleting it, like he deleted the three previous emails from Amanda at Little, Brown. He could try to get on with his day, as though Adam’s superciliousness, his trying to peer down at Fergus from atop his high horse, hasn’t made him suddenly, irrationally furious.

In the end, he types out a single sentence, pecking at his phone’s tiny keyboard with vicious, angry jabs.

_Publish what you like._

He doesn’t bother signing it. _Fuck you_ , he thinks, as he presses ‘send’. _Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you_.

He throws the rest of his cup of tea down the sink and grabs his coat from the hook in the hall. He slams the front door behind him, needing a packet of cigarettes and a walk round the Common to smoke them. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final five chapters will follow next Sunday. Thank you so much to those who've commented - means the world <3

Christmas is punctuated by excruciating phone calls with Richard which Fergus ends up making excuses to avoid, and long periods of lying in front of the TV with a glass of wine, wishing he were anywhere sunnier than Camberwell. Richard has been asking, in tones of patience and understanding, when Fergus is intending to come back to New York.

The thing is, he was lucky, when he made his escape from London, to be able to afford to buy the apartment outright. Adam would have taken issue with ‘lucky’, if they were playing a round of the Electable or A Wanker game. Really, it boiled down to being the middle-class only child of middle-class only children and not having had to pay much tax when he inherited from Mum, what with Dad already being long gone. Dan Miller was pilloried for exactly the same thing by the _Mail_ in the aftermath of the election, just before the PLP gave him the boot. Fergus had felt sorry for him, because he couldn’t see why paying exactly the amount of tax he owed had made Miller an egregious hypocrite, when half the fucking Cabinet consisted of people whose family millions were squirrelled away in hedge funds and off-shore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. There’d been photos of Miller’s head on stacks of £50 notes and references to champagne socialists all over the front covers of the tabloids two months after Miller’s mum had died, and Fergus had felt vaguely grubby and sympathetic about it. He’d sent a belated condolence card in solidarity and received a note signed by Miller’s PA in return. 

All of which is to say that, when Richard calls, Fergus is able to prevaricate and claim there are still outstanding matters to tie up with the sale of the house, and that Richard needn’t worry because the apartment will be fine until Fergus gets back.

This leaves him sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop on a Saturday morning, squinting at photos of houses on neighbouring streets and trying to decide what they’ve all got going for them that his house does not. Unfortunately, looking at picture after picture of spotless bathrooms and kitchens with bi-fold doors leading onto tiny, manicured gardens is making him begin to regret the eight and a half years he’s spent letting the house wallow in a state of benign neglect.

When he bought this place, he fell in love with it precisely because it didn’t harbour any pretensions towards being fashionable. It had clearly been decorated by someone with more personality than Fergus has ever pretended to possess, and he had liked moving into such a cosy, lived-in space, without having to put any of the effort into decorating it himself. This tiny, colourful house had allowed him to imagine he might be the sort of person who didn’t let anyone else’s opinion of him matter, and had a life beyond trudging backwards and forwards between Westminster and Norwich every weekend.

Richard would say he ought to ring the estate agent about the most recent valuation. And then what? Put the house on the market, sever the final tie binding him London, and move to New York, once and for all? All those trips to the coast after the election, when he’d let himself imagine such a different future, make him a stranger to himself now. He closes the laptop and pushes it to one side.

It’s late enough in the morning that the sun is warming his arm where it rests on the kitchen table beside his mug of coffee and copy of the weekend _Guardian_. He starts as he usually does, by shaking out the supplements and dividing them into the piles of things he’s definitely going to read (news, _Review_ , and _Weekend_ , in that order), those he definitely isn’t (sport) and those he’ll think about, if he’s really determined to waste the rest of the morning lounging at the kitchen table in the pleasant patch of winter sun. He’s about to make himself another coffee when his gaze falls on the colourful previews of articles featured in the different sections of the newspaper.

Briefly, he considers proving something to himself by getting up from the table, taking himself off for a shower and then putting the papers straight in the recycling bin. Instead, he reaches for _Review_ and flicks past the editorial pieces and the literary news. There, on the fifth page, as promised, is Adam.

It’s only a small photograph. He’s sitting in front of an intimidating set of bookshelves. Has he sold the Docklands bachelor pad and moved somewhere tasteful and elegant and filled with books? Is there a girlfriend lurking just out of shot, smiling as she brings Adam a coffee, her hand alighting on his shoulder as she leans over him to place a mug on the table beside his reading glasses? Adam’s hair is silver, and he’s lost weight since Fergus last saw him. He looks lean and wary, a defensive smile curling at the corners of his mouth. He’s wearing an open-necked white shirt with the sleeves rolled back. Fergus diverts his eyes to the article beside the photograph.  
  


> **_Redemption Song?_ **
> 
> _For a man once considered the scourge of hapless MPs during his tenure at the_ Daily Mail _, Adam Kenyon has become the surprise darling of the politico podcasts in the wake of the publication of his new book,_ Second Coming: the Long Wait for Democracy _. His_ _history at the_ Mail _and time spent as special advisor to Fergus Williams, Junior Minister for Social Affairs and Citizenship during the coalition government, has gifted him insight into both ends of the Westminster sausage machine. Among the many revelations contained in_ Second Coming, _not least of which are the recent allegations about the extent of the Home Office’s prior knowledge of problems arising from their disposal of crucial immigration documents, Kenyon shares glimpses of a government riven by factionalism, bigotry and perfidious double-dealing. He reserves a particularly withering assessment for the party he served during his time at the Department for Social Affairs and Citizenship, shedding light on the infighting and cowardice that ultimately prevented the Liberal Democrats from wielding any substantial political influence._
> 
> _Anyone hoping for salacious stories and behind-the-scenes gossip_ _will, perhaps, be disappointed. Preferring substance over sleaze, Kenyon launches a both-barrelled attack on the vacuum at the heart of British politics. Most surprising, perhaps, is the strident voice that emerges, calling for a new way of seeing, thinking and doing at Westminster, in light of the result of the Brexit referendum. This book is vicious and uncompromising and, in places, offers a refreshing argument for sweeping parliamentary reform. Those wishing to indulge in the schadenfreude of watching our elected representatives prove themselves incompetent at every turn will find much to entertain here, but so too will those in search of a different way forward. Kenyon's manifesto is far from visionary, but it is, perhaps, a harbinger of the necessary change to come._

There’s still a ludicrous, swooping agony to be found in seeing his name tied to Adam’s so casually. He takes another glance at the photograph. Adam looks content, in a smug, confrontational sort of way.

Idly, Fergus opens up the laptop again and carries out a search for Adam on Facebook, coming up with nothing, as per the previous three times he’s done this. There’s a Twitter account, but it tends to be limited to tiresome commentary about the cricket and the profile picture is too small to be of use. As a last resort, he Googles Adam’s name. A flurry of returns relating to the book appears. He’s scrolling through pictures of the front cover when he pauses on a black and white photograph of Adam smiling candidly at the camera.

It’s from a publisher’s blog, and it’s been cropped to exclude Adam’s companion, of whom only a sliver of handsome, smiling face and one leg is visible. Adam’s hair is cut in that short back-and-sides style that seems to be the fashion all of a sudden. He’s aged well, the fucker. Fergus is wrinkled and sagging in comparison. It’s unfortunate that the sight of him still has Fergus’ heart lurching behind his ribs. The man he's sitting next to is younger than Adam by a number of years, and Adam has a hand on his knee in a manner Fergus would call proprietary. He looks happy.

Three weeks ago, Fergus had turned on Radio 4 to hear John Humphrys talking about him on _Today_ , which is an experience he never, ever wishes to repeat.

“ - _resurgence of the controversy over the Windrush immigration scandal, today, as a new book by former government advisor, Adam Kenyon, appears to confirm that the issue surrounding the improper disposal of immigration landing cards was brought to the attention of the Home Office as early as 2012, while former Conservative Prime Minister Mary Drake was still in post as Home Secretary. Liberal Democrat MP for Norwich South, Fergus Williams, made an official enquiry about the whereabouts of the documents in November 2014_ -”

He’d turned the radio off at the socket and refused to answer his phone for a week, until the calls from journalists had slowed from a deluge to a trickle. Typical fucking Adam. Writes a book, becomes a minor celebrity, and manages to be a millstone around Fergus’ neck even when they haven’t spoken in two and a half fucking years. 

He closes the website and puts his laptop to one side again. Work as a freelancer, offering his services as a consultant, has many benefits: he’s never slept better, or earned so much money for so few hours’ work. The problem is, there are three days before his next work engagement, a meeting with the Greens about fiscal policy, which means he’ll be rattling around in the house until then. At least there’ll be plenty of time for finally getting round to clearing Mum’s belongings out of the attic.

He abandons the papers and Adam’s handsome, self-satisfied face, and trudges upstairs to unfold the ladder from the trapdoor in the ceiling of the spare room.

In January - five days after a New Year’s Eve which had consisted of Fergus getting drunk on a bottle of Cava, alone on his sofa in front of Jools Holland’s _Hootenanny_ , and passing out long before the clock struck midnight - his phone rings with a call from an unknown number while he’s out for a miserable jog around the park. He’s unfit, sweating and breathless and beset by a severe stitch within yards of the park gates, so he’s grateful to have an excuse to stagger to a stop, leaning against a lamppost.

“Fergus, hi, it’s Mark. Heard you were back in the UK.”

It’s nearly three years since Mark last called. Fergus can’t, in all honesty, say he’s missed him.“Mark. Been a while.”

“You alright? Haven’t interrupted something, have I?”

“Fuck off,” Fergus gasps. “Thought I’d take up running. Fucking disaster.”

Mark laughs. “Worst possible resolution. I said I was giving up booze and lasted three days.”

 _“_ Yeah, well, I’m busy trying not to cough up a lung,” Fergus snaps. Mark laughs at him a second time. “What d’you want?”

“You’re a fucking delight, as ever. D’you fancy coming round for dinner?”

It crosses Fergus’ mind to ask why Mark would think dinner with he and the second wife Fergus has only met the once, and that was on the awkward cottage holiday in the Norfolk Broads that was never repeated, despite everyone lying through their teeth and saying they’d had a marvellous time, would be an invitation he’d want to accept.

“Who’s going to be there?”

“Just you, you twat.”

Fergus pauses, but there’s no other response that springs to mind. “Why?”

“Because I’ve just found out from Prakash that you’re back on home turf for a bit; thought we could catch up before you head back to New York. Feel free to tell me to fuck off, though,” Mark adds, on the verge of sounding pissed off.

“Sorry,” Fergus says, even though he isn’t. He wants to say no. He wants to spend his evenings the way he has been ever since he got back; on his own, with the curtains drawn, sticking two fingers up to the rest of the world. “Alright, sounds good.”

“Cool,” says Mark, and then makes the arrangements about when Fergus should come over. “See you then, you tosser,” he says, in parting, and Fergus feels obscurely furious with him for what is clearly an act of charity, word having got round the old crowd that Fergus is back in Blighty and just as miserable as he was before he left.

Fergus takes the Metropolitan Line into deepest suburbia and lurks on Mark’s doorstep clutching a bottle of Malbec, feeling oddly cheered at the prospect of someone else cooking him a meal, for once.

The front door opens to reveal Mark, balder and thicker of waist than Fergus remembers him, grinning and holding out his arms for a hug. Fergus hands Mark the wine and allows himself to be embraced. He grimaces when Mark claps him heartily on the back, a blokeish pantomime, as though it’s necessary to make sure Fergus knows his days of snogging unsuspecting male postgraduate students at parties are behind him.

“Why didn’t you say you were back?” Mark demands, taking his coat and abandoning it over the end of the banister. “I had to find out from fucking Prakash.”

“Yeah, bumped into him in Sainsbury’s,” says Fergus, neglecting to mention that he hadn’t been particularly thrilled about it, either.

“Come through,” Mark says, ushering him into the living room. “Do you want a drink?”

“Please.”

Mark disappears, taking Fergus’ bottle with him. When he returns, he’s clutching a glass of sparkling water. “Had to get back on the wagon,” he says ruefully. “On the verge of diabetes, apparently.”

“Bloody hell,” says Fergus.

“Christmas wasn’t much fun,” Mark confides, uncharacteristically glum. Then, rallying, he nudges Fergus’ arm with his elbow. “Anyway, what the fuck are you doing with yourself, now you’re back?”

Fergus shrugs. “Consultancy with the New Economics Foundation. Doing some work pushing the Green New Deal; they wanted a perspective from Washington.”

“Not bad.”

“Yeah, it is,” Fergus says, grimacing. “They’re all twenty one and wearing jeans in the office, and they look at me like I’m a fucking fossil because I turn up wearing a fucking tie.”

Mark laughs. “This is why you want to work from home. I’m doing everything over webcam; could be sitting there with my cock out under the table, and no one’d know.”

“Does Phoebe know that’s how you make your money, cock out on the internet?”

“As if anyone’d pay,” says Phoebe, appearing in doorway with an enormous glass of wine in each hand. “Hello, Fergus; lovely to see you again.”

She seems to genuinely mean it, which is vaguely bewildering, and comes over to kiss him on the cheek as she hands him a glass of wine.

“Where are the kids?” Fergus asks, realising he ought to have asked after them sooner.

“My mum’s,” says Phoebe. “Thank Christ. Fortnightly reprieve; they’re at the squabbling over everything stage again.”

“All-out punch-up last night over who got the Playstation,” Mark adds, wearily.

Fergus nods as though he knows what they’re talking about and Phoebe grins at him. “It’s even more boring to talk about than live through,” she assures him. “How is it, being back?”

After Fergus has eaten a beef Wellington which Mark tries to claim he made from scratch - Phoebe rolls her eyes and explains that it came ready-made from the butcher on the high street - followed by a hefty slab of cheesecake, he’s feeling pleasantly drunk and docile. It means he’s entirely unprepared when Mark pushes back his chair from the dining table and fixes him with a look entirely too skewering and shrewd, and he realises that this Mark, serious and sober, is one he hasn’t often met before.

“Have you read it, then?” he asks, and for a moment Fergus has no idea what he’s talking about.

“No,” he lies, sharply, when he realises. “Have you?”

Mark nods. “It’s bloody good, you know. Deserves the fanfare. All the shit about the Windrush immigration papers - if Drake were still PM, it’d have sunk her.”

Fergus shrugs. His good mood is rapidly evaporating, and he feels cornered, somehow, like Mark got him here under false pretences, just to question him about Adam’s stupid fucking book.

“Listen, I know it’s none of my fucking business,” Mark says, and Fergus is suddenly accutely grateful that Phoebe is in the kitchen noisily loading the dishwasher. He feels himself colour preemptively, flushing hot from the tips of his ears, all the way down. So much for plausible deniability.

“For fuck’s sake, Mark.“

“You know how it comes across? It’s easy enough to read between the lines, for someone who knows you both -“

“Can we not -”

“Why? Was it supposed to be a fucking secret?”

Fergus stares at the tablecloth, wondering how much he ought to say. “Neither of us were out.”

Mark looks at him steadily, but not unkindly. “Fergus, mate. I don’t know about Adam, but for you that ship’d pretty much sailed while we were still at uni.”

Fergus considers getting angry. He considers getting up from Mark and Phoebe’s lovely dining table in their comfortable dining room and slamming the door on his way out, wondering whether he can afford to fuck up one of his few remaining friendships. “It didn’t last long,” he says, in the end. It’s almost a relief. “The thing with me and Adam. It was only a thing for a few months before I lost the election. Adam didn’t want - it wasn’t worth ruining anyone’s career over.”

“Jesus. It’s not the fucking 1950s.”

“Fuck off, it’s not - it’s easy for you to say, isn’t it, Mr fucking Clean?”

“Sorry, sorry -” Mark holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Is this why you took off for the States?”

“Partly.” Fergus knocks back the rest of his wine. “Mostly. I don’t know.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Emailed. He wanted me to say I was ok with the book - told him to publish whatever he liked.”

“Mate,” Mark says, and he sounds so solemn and concerned that Fergus actually considers punching him in the face, just so the ordeal might be over.

Luckily, Phoebe chooses that moment to reappear with a cafetière and a stack of coffee cups, and Mark shuts up, casting a final, knowing glance at Fergus’ burning face.

He lets the subject drop and Phoebe asks about the apartment in New York, saying she spent six months as an intern at a firm off Wall Street in the late 90s, does Fergus know whether a certain bar still exists…? He’s grateful, suddenly, to both of them, and feels like a twat for contemplating ringing to make his excuses, when he’d been anticipating an awkward evening of small-talk and the usual self-congratulatory bullshit he’s come to expect from Richard’s academic circle, whenever he’s been taken along as a plus-one to functions at the university.

“Thanks for inviting me,” he says sincerely, much later, when he and Phoebe have finished cackling about her reminiscences of New York over another bottle of wine and Mark has called him a taxi.

“When are you going back?” Phoebe asks, after she’s hugged him goodbye.

He shrugs. Suddenly, he wants to ask Mark about Rashida, and whether he ever hears from her. He and Mark had lost touch for a few years, during the divorce, but he’d gathered from Adam that it hadn’t been pleasant, that Phoebe had appeared on the scene before Rashida had left it, and that sides had been taken and friendships sacrificed. He’d never been particularly keen on Rashida, in any case, and Adam had positively detested her, so it was natural they’d lost touch. Still, he wonders how easy it had been to sever the tie, and how painful.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Phoebe says, kissing his cheek.

Mark hugs him, too, clapping him on the back again, only this time it doesn’t feel patronising, only bracing and briskly affectionate. It occurs to Fergus that he’s drunk and maudlin and needs to get himself home.

He waves to them from the back seat of the taxi and falls asleep almost immediately. He wakes up dehydrated and nauseous halfway across Vauxhall Bridge. The house, when he lets himself through the front door and closes it behind him, welcomes him back with the familiar smell of sandalwood.

**Westminster, 2010** ****

Fergus’ maiden speech is crafted to lend him an air of sober gravitas, which is quite the feat, given that he's making it on the subject of the rising cost of bus travel in East Anglia.

“There, look,” Adam says, the following day, while they peer at the computer screen in Fergus’ parliamentary office. “You’re doing it again.”

Fergus glares at the poor-quality recording of his speech from BBC Parliament. “Fuck off. You’re the one who told me to use my hands more.”

Adam pauses the video with Fergus mid-gesture. “Yeah, to make you look at ease, not go full Hitler at Nuremberg.”

“Well, Hitler notwithstanding, I think I did a bloody good job.”

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be so fucking sensitive.”

“I’m not fucking sensitive, it’s just - it’s my maiden fucking speech, isn’t it, and you’re telling me I looked like bloody Hitler.”

“I was joking,” Adam protests. “You did do a good job.”

“Yeah, well, wouldn’t hurt you to say so occasionally.”

Adam looks at him, finally, glancing away from his analysis of Fergus’ performance. “You didn’t fuck it up,” he concedes. “And you nailed the solemnity; you were surprisingly statesmanlike while talking about pensioners’ travel passes. Not that it’s hard in comparison to Nicola fucking Murray.”

For once, the barbed compliment appears to be in earnest. Fergus nods, satisfied, and Adam turns back to the screen. Fergus is actually rather pleased with himself; Adam once acknowledged, grudgingly, that he has an engaging sincerity about him once he forgets to look like he's trying not to shit himself, and the speech will go down in Fergus' estimation as a fairly solid triumph in that regard.

Adam closes the video. “I’ve been asking around, and I think we might be able to get you on the BBC.”

“For an interview?”

“No, you tit. The Backbench Business Committee. Normally, we wouldn’t have a chance of getting you on a committee so soon, but it’s new and it’s a sop to the Wright reform brigade, and they’ll have to have two of our lot to balance the numbers. It’s as good a shot as we’ll get, this side of Christmas.”

“What’ll I have to do?”

“It’s a party vote, STV; if we park you firmly in the fresh-faced, enthusiastic and unthreatening camp, you should do well out of it. All you’ll need to do is profess a deep and abiding passion for procedural reform, and kiss the right arses.”

“Whose arses are those?”

Adam smiles smugly. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a little list.”

Adam’s been seeing a woman named Pippa, introduced to him by that viper Angela Heaney at the retirement drinks of someone he used to work with at the _Mirror_ , for five months, now. That makes it his longest relationship in all the time Fergus has known him. He’s been on the lookout for signs of Adam becoming a simpering bore, but so far the relationship seems to be based entirely on Adam taking Pippa out for drinks a couple of times a week and coming into work the next morning looking pleased with himself and like he didn’t get much sleep. When drunk, he’s dropped hints that the reason the whole thing has lasted so long is because, in an unlikely turn of events, given that she looks like the type of girl who buys all her underwear from Laura Ashley, Pippa’s got the stamina of a race horse and makes good use of the fact that she was once nearly selected for the Olympic gymnastic team.

The problem is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore a couple of fundamental truths about Adam’s relationships, which are: that Fergus hates all of his short-lived girlfriends, unreservedly and with great prejudice; and that it’s becoming increasingly difficultto lie to himself about the reasons why.

Case in point: Adam was supposed to be meeting Pippa for drinks this evening, but there’s a reception at the FCO and Fergus still isn’t trusted to attend these events by himself. It’s been a long, tedious evening of damp canapés and lukewarm English sparkling wine, Fergus has failed to mingle with any of the big-name backbenchers on Adam's hit-list for his election to the BBC, and now he’s snuck outside for a fag in the hope that, by the time he gets back inside, the whole thing will be winding down and he can go home for an M&S curry and the next episode of _Luther_.

The problem, and the reason he’s smoked his way through one and a half cigarettes without wanting to go back inside, is that he’d decided to go to the loo on his way to the fire exit, hoping he wouldn’t bump into Adam and be scolded about his failure to network. Imagine his surprise, on pushing open the door to the gents and finding Adam stumbling out of a cubicle, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

Fergus takes a drag on his cigarette, wondering what the fuck he ought to do about it. Ought he to do anything about it? It’s Adam’s business, surely. But this is all so new - Westminster, trying to inveigle his way onto the BBC - and if Adam takes a nose-dive into a problematic coke habit, Fergus will be fucked without him.

Most of all, he’s furious with himself, because he should have fucking known. He thinks back to all the times Adam’s disappeared in the middle of a party, the midst of an after-work do, and come back sharp and brilliant and preternaturally capable of charming everyone in the room. Fergus hasn’t exactly been immune to it; maybe that’s why he hasn’t bothered to wonder whether it’s chemically induced.

“Why’re you hiding out here?”

Adam is looming in the doorway, silhouetted against the fluorescent lights of the fire escape. He’s got that bright, nervous energy to him, and Fergus can’t believe he’s been so fucking stupid, not to have noticed it before. He holds up his cigarette to provide an excuse for his absence from the reception.

For a long moment, neither of them says anything. Fergus wants Adam to begin, but Adam seems to be waiting for him, tensed in the doorway as though he expects to be sacked on the spot.

“Is it a problem?” Fergus asks, in the end, wishing he could see Adam’s face, but it’s still concealed by the shadows in the doorway.

Adam shrugs languidly. “‘Course not.”

“Good,” says Fergus. “Because if it is, we can handle it. I just need to know what I’m dealing with.”

“Ferg,” Adam says, stepping out of the doorway. “I’m not a complete fucking twat. It’s not a problem.”

Fergus has a number of favourite outfits on Adam, and he has catalogued each of them, mentally. There’s the soft, dark shirt he wore at the constituency election party; the squash shorts, obviously; but he thinks this might be his favourite. The dramatic, elegant lines of the overcoat, and the scarf draped just so around his neck. He must have gone back for his coat before he came looking for Fergus. He looks devastatingly handsome and Fergus wishes he were less unequivocally gay - _plus ça_ fucking _change_ \- because his stomach’s doing funny turns and his fingers are itching to reach out and pull Adam closer by the ends of that stupid, green scarf.

“Maybe not at the FCO, next time, you fucking idiot,” he says, instead.

Adam nods, inching closer. There’s a distinct moment in which Fergus suddenly thinks, this is it. Adam is going to take the cigarette from between his fingers and crush it beneath the toe of his shoe. He’s going to crowd Fergus into the wall and kiss him. The thought of him using his breadth, those shoulders Fergus has spent the past fifteen years wanting to dig his fingernails into, to get Fergus where he wants him, has his pulse kicking thickly in his ears.

Adam’s eyes pass over him and settle on the wall beside him. Fergus breathes out a mouthful of smoke. It’s almost enough to convince him that he’s actually going mad, the way that Adam’s attention settles on him and then flutters away; it makes him smug and vindictive, that Pippa might be an almost-Olympic gymnast, but she isn’t the one Adam’s spending his evening with. Then he tells himself not to be such a credulous fucking idiot, and just when he’s almost managed to convince himself that he’s seeing things that don’t exist, Adam looks at him again, for a little too long, in a way that makes him think, _maybe, what if -_

“I’m fucking off home,” he says, in the end, abandoning the last of the cigarette.

“You’re cool about it, yeah?” says Adam, defensively.

“Don’t be a twat.”

Adam doesn’t offer to share a cab, and Fergus assumes he’ll be going out to meet Pippa, after all.

The following day, Adam strolls in just before eight looking loose-limbed and self-satisfied, and Fergus keeps his eyes on his emails to avoid watching him banter with Pete and Andrew in the Spads’ office. Carole has sent through a list of engagements with the councillors in Norwich over the summer, wanting to know which he’d find least objectionable and which he absolutely won’t be attending.

“I’ve got that breakfast thing with Douglas,” Adam reminds him, coming in to place a cup of coffee by his computer. “Have you seen the email from Carole?”

“Yeah, are we dodging the fair?” Fergus asks. It’s in the middle of the summer recess, which means technically Fergus can claim to be unavailable, but Carole had intimated that Fergus’ presence might go a long way to building bridges with the local blue-rinse brigade.

Adam shrugs. “Well, you can go, if you like. I’m taking leave, remember.”

“Oh.” Fergus vaguely remembers a conversation about the Greek Islands, during which he hadn’t recommended Mykonos, because the bits of it he’d visited as a nervous, for-all-intents-and-purposes virginal twenty-two year old definitely wouldn’t have been to Pippa’s taste.

“Don’t do the sad fucking RSPCA ad look,” Adam says, rolling his eyes at him. “You could go on a fucking holiday, too, like a normal person.”

“With whom?” he demands, and then regrets it, because Adam is frowning at him, like he’s said something embarrassing.

“I don’t know, anyone whose company you can stand for a week. Find someone online and say you’ll let them fuck you if they promise to take you to Paris on the Eurostar.”

“Fuck off.”

“You’ve got the thing with Jasper at seven,” Adam reminds him. “Chat him up about the votes. Be charming.”

“I’m always fucking charming,” he says, throwing a stress ball at his head. It hits the door as Adam closes it behind him, and Fergus watches it bounce on the carpet and roll under the filing cabinet.

Maybe Adam’s right. Maybe finding someone - a number of someones - on the internet is the best way for him to spend his summer. The last time he went on holiday - a proper holiday, not just to visit his mum, or to stay with friends in that godawful cottage on the Norfolk Broads - had been five years ago. He’s never been good in warmer climes, reduced to a sweaty, crumpled, sunburned disaster within moments of stepping off the plane. Perhaps this year’s the year; he wonders how furious Adam would be, if he took himself off to Mykonos again and attempted to reclaim his youth.

Quo Vadis is not, he thinks dismally as he exits the taxi outside the club’s front door, his natural habitat. Firstly, it’s in the heart of Soho, and Fergus has never quite felt comfortable in the glamour and sleaze of Soho’s bars; he’s an unsophisticate, a drinker of Italian bottled lager, far happier in a pub with a vaguely sticky carpet. He doesn’t wear a suit well enough to inhabit this world of the witty and well-dressed. Needing an invitation to get in has already left him ill-disposed towards the place, anyway; it’s Adam’s fault he’s here, networking (Adam’s word), scrabbling around for support for his election to Backbench Business (Fergus’ understanding of its meaning).

At the door, he gives his name. “I’ve been invited,” he adds, feeling foolish.

“Of course,” says a brisk and not even slightly obsequious member of staff. “I’ll take you through to the Blue Room.”

The Blue Room is aptly named. Vibrant upholstery and the murmur of subdued conversation conspire to make Fergus feel as though he’s stepped into an expensive aquarium, or he’s David Attenborough walking into the Malaysian rainforest in search of an endangered species of macaque. Except, in this analogy, he is the zoological specimen, and it’s clear that he is regarded as such by the other patrons as he trails the waiter to a plush, blue seat beside the bar.

“Mr Brereton has left a message to say he’s been delayed. May I get you a drink, in the meantime?”

“Oh,” says Fergus, nonplussed.

It’s not that he's incapable of fitting in in surroundings such as these. He endured more than his fair share of formal Halls at Oxford, and he’s posh and white and male enough that no one really bats an eyelid wherever he pops up, despite his general air of dishevelment after a long day at the House. It’s just that it _has_ been a long day at the House, and all he’d wanted to do was crawl home on the Tube to watch Idris Elba kick down some doors. Instead, he’s here, alone, feeling the itch of discreet, suspicious eyes on the back of his neck.

“Might I suggest a martini?” says the barman. “Our house special.”

Fergus has never knowingly enjoyed a martini; the last one he tasted was reminiscent of olive-flavoured paint thinner. “Yes, fine,” he says, attempting to sound self-assured.

Five minutes later, he’s sipping a martini, remembering why he steers clear of spirits unless he’s on a deliberate mission to fall over, and attempting to peer around the room, with its huge, dazzling array of mirrors, without making his discomfort obvious.

“The illustrious Mr Fergus Williams,” says a voice like melting butter directly over his left shoulder. “Room for one more at the bar?”

When Fergus turns, Lord Julius Nicholson’s shiny head and jovial, well-fed face have hoved into view. Fergus is vaguely alarmed that Nicholson seems to have heard of him; he's a brand new Lib Dem backbencher with no discernible political clout and there is absolutely no reason why Nicholson should have.

Nicholson smiles. “Don’t tell me, I’m sure you’re here for nefarious purposes.”

How does the man manage to make everything sound so solicitous? He could be reciting the phone book and still make it sound like someone involved was being incited to steal the last bit of cake from the nursery tray while Nanny isn’t looking.

Fergus frowns at him warily. “Lord Nicholson.”

“Please, call me Julius.” Nicholson slides into the seat beside him. “I hope you don’t mind if I join you. My dinner companion has failed to materialise and I spied another lonely soul and thought it a shame to let both our evenings go to waste.”

“Me too. I mean, I’m waiting for someone. Jasper Brereton,” he clarifies, in response to Nicholson’s enquiring expression.

“Of course. We’ve spent many a long afternoon in arms in the defence of democracy. Good man, excellent taste in cheese.” Nicholson smiles mildly. “I suppose one would have to say that Jasper’s loss is another man’s gain.”

“Would one?”

“Oh, most certainly,” says Nicholson. “Now, have you eaten? I was rather in the mood for a nibble, and the biscuits here are something of a speciality. I’m rather a fiend for an almond biscotti and a glass of amontillado.”

For the next half hour, Nicholson asks conscientious questions about Fergus’ speech, gently interrogates him about his stance on a range of issues from Europe to the legalisation of class-C drugs, and appears to take genuine interest in Fergus’ answers, nodding and murmuring his agreement and ordering Fergus another sherry before he even realises the first one has disappeared.

Fergus is aware, of course, of what’s going on. He’s not a complete naif. But Adam sent him here under orders to network, and if he can get a drink and conversation with someone who is good at pretending to like him out of it, Fergus is prepared to consider it a win. There’s also the sly, reptilian part of him, which is basking in Nicholson’s compliments and noting that he isn’t necessarily averse to being chatted up by a peer of the realm.

“Adam…?” Nicholson queries, halfway through Fergus’ account of the hustings at the university in April. “Your partner, or…?”

“Oh,” says Fergus. “No, my special advisor. He’s out somewhere. With a woman,” he adds, stumbling over his words. He blames the sherry.

“Ah, yes, of course. The illustrious Mr Kenyon, late of our friends of the tabloid press. You’re far too lovely a young man, if I may say so,” Julius murmurs, “to be throwing yourself away on anyone so undeserving.”

Fergus narrowly avoids swallowing too much of his drink. Has he been so very obvious? Besides which, he knows for a fact that Julius is no more than ten years his senior. It begins to occur to him that the lecherous uncle routine might be one that Julius leans into deliberately, an eccentricity that allows him to do this sort of thing - chatting up inexperienced ministers in bars - without provoking a scandal.

“I’m thirty seven,” he says, meaning it to sound withering, but falling closer to petulance than he would have liked.

Nicholson smiles as though Fergus has said something utterly stupid and unwittingly charming.

By the time any hope of Jasper making it down to the club has long-since flown and he’s sent another message apologising and offering to meet Fergus in the Strangers’ Bar the following night, Fergus is tired and drunk. Julius is turning out to be an appreciative audience, murmuring in surprise every now and again, and asking polite, arch little questions to draw Fergus into sharing confidences. Were Fergus of a mind to take offence, he’d have said that it’s all the slightest bit condescending, the way Nicholson is treating him like a tart at a party, plying him with booze and letting him embarrass himself like this. As it is, it’s all rather too easy to sink further into the blue upholstery and let Julius order him another drink.

“I do hope you won’t think me forward, if I say what a lovely time I’ve had, this evening,” Nicholson murmurs, smiling at Fergus over the rim of his glass.

This is exactly the kind of thing Adam would need to know about, Fergus thinks, if he went through with it. It’s a terrible, horrible idea.

“Back in a minute,” he says, in the end, unable to meet Julius’ eye. He slithers off his stool and tries to make his way with grace in the direction of the hallway that leads to the gents.

The toilets are spacious and tastefully lit and incongruously equipped with a pair of turquoise, velvet chaises longues, which stand at either side of the row of marble hand basins. A gilt-edged mirror covers the length of the wall above a row of exotic potted plants, and the air is perfumed with something expensive and musky; Fergus scoffs, internally, but is rather taken with the opulence of it all.

He’s just finished washing his hands and is drying them on an embroidered hand towel, when Nicholson steps quietly into the room and closes the door behind him. His eyes meet Fergus’ in the mirror above the sinks as he turns the key - the key! What kind of public convenience has a lock with a key, Fergus wonders, on the verge of panic. Nicholson begins to undo the button at the waistband of his Savile Row trousers and Fergus swallows, watching him do it.

On his knees beside the velvet sofa, Fergus is struck, a second time, by the knowledge that this is one of the kind of things Adam had said he’d need to know about, back when they set out to conquer the world from that pub in Paddington, nearly two years ago. When Nicholson returns the favour, his bald head bobbing in the soft, forgiving lighting of the world’s most exclusive club toilet, this is when Fergus comes: thinking about Adam, and what he’ll say, what he might do, when Fergus tells him.

Nicholson takes out a handkerchief, afterwards, to dab at the corners of his mouth, and Fergus nearly starts to laugh, until he catches sight of himself in the enormous mirror, flushed and dishevelled and looking exactly like someone who just got off in the toilets with a member of the peerage.

Jesus Christ. Beneath the lax elation of having been sucked off, Fergus suddenly feels repulsive.

“You mustn’t work yourself up about it,” says Nicholson, glancing up at him as he pats his hands dry with a towel. “Wondering what he’d do, if it got out. That way madness lies, take it from one who knows.”

“Is there a chance of it getting out?” Fergus asks, aiming for an air of casual insouciance and falling far short, if Nicholson’s pitying, amused expression is anything to go by.

“My advice is not to worry,” Nicholson says with an air of confidentiality. “Secrets aired within these walls are rarely divulged, and only then when certain among us deem it expedient. You needn’t worry on that score.”

Fergus wonders whether this is Nicholson’s attempt at blackmail, but Nicholson leans towards him in the moment before he leaves and kisses him kindly on the cheek, as though bestowing some sort of blessing. “You really ought to do something about making yourself happy,” is his advice. He pats Fergus on the arm and slips past him, all handmade brogues and expensive cologne.

Adam swans back into the office in August looking tanned and relaxed, and a week later casually lets slip that he isn’t seeing Pippa anymore, in the midst of a conversation about Fergus’ dry cleaning. Fergus ends up accompanying him that weekend to the second test against India at Lords, sitting through five hours of cricket in a state of utter boredom, his satisfaction at Pippa’s demise curdled by the memory of the sympathy in Nicholson’s expression when he’d patted Fergus on the arm and told him to look to his own happiness.

“Very well done,” says Cliff Lawton, who has been elected Chair of the BBC, when the committee meets for the first time, the first Wednesday back after recess. “Excellent to have some new blood with us. Between you and me, I was a tad surprised to see your lot elect a new boy, but word on the grapevine is that you’ve already made a good impression. Julius positively sang your praises, the other day. Looking forward to working with you.”

Fergus is left floundering in his wake, wondering whether this was quite what Adam had had in mind, when he’d told Fergus to start making friends in the right places.


	7. Chapter 7

**Westminster, 2012**

The first day of Lord Goolding’s inquiry finds Fergus lurking in his office, keeping an anxious eye on the livestream. He’s under strict instructions not to venture anywhere he might be cornered by the tabloids, so he’s been using the ministerial car to shuffle between the house and the department all week, and he’s starting to feel the itchy hand of claustrophobia upon the back of his neck. DoSAC exists in a state of heightened, anxious anticipation of disaster at the best of times; now, with the inquiry hanging over them, it’s a miracle no one’s lost it and embarked on a killing spree with an axe they’ve wrenched from the fire escape with their bare, bloodied hands.

He and Adam are not supposed to be communicating, on the orders of Cal Richards, drafted in to fight fires and prevent DoSAC from imploding under the weight of its ministers’ own stupidity (his words) and frighten Mannion into doing as he’s told. This means that, when Malcolm Tucker implicates he and Adam in an attempted party coup, Fergus hesitates before picking up the phone. He’s pacing around his desk in a state of extreme agitation when Adam takes the matter out of his hands and calls him first.

“That wizened fucking Scottish _cunt_ ,” Fergus spits, when he’s scrambled for the phone and kicked the office door closed.

“It’s either really fucking clever, or incredibly fucking stupid,” says Adam, as though Tucker has made a particularly intriguing move in a game of chess. “Goolding won’t appreciate being played for a fool.”

“What the fuck are we going to do?”

“You’re not going to do anything,” Adam says. “I’m on my way in.”

Fifteen minutes later, Adam strides round the corner from the lifts and Fergus is so relieved to see him he almost does something mortifying like hugging him or offering to make him a cup of tea.

“Have you heard from Michael?” he asks, instead, when Adam enters the office and starts taking off his coat and scarf.

“No, have you?”

Fergus groans, wishing Terri were here, rather than about to give evidence, because then he’d have someone to shout at. “Well, we had a good run. So long and thanks for all the difference we didn’t fucking make.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, we’re out, aren’t we?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “He can’t fucking sack you; it’ll look like he’s admitting we’re a threat. Look at the polls, of course everyone’s plotting against him! If it’s not us, it’s someone worse. He’s got to pretend this politics-of-consensus bullshit is working, and we all know Mannion would eat Clive or any of the other fucking idiots for breakfast, if he went for a reshuffle.”

“Do you think you ought to go and remind Michael of that?”

Adam rolls his eyes again, but he’s frowning, as though some part of Fergus’ anxiety is rubbing off on him. Good. At least then Fergus won’t be suffering alone.

“Fine,” Adam says, picking up his scarf again and looping it around his neck. Fergus follows him out into the department. Robyn is lurking by the photocopier looking as though she’s hoping not to be spotted by either of them. “If anyone rings,” Adam tells her, “you don’t know anything, right? Fergus isn’t here.”

“But, he is, though,” she says.

“Yes,” says Adam, through gritted teeth. “You know that, and I know that, but it is of the utmost importance that the press don’t find out. Jesus Christ, did any of you get any actual training when you joined the Civil Service? It’s like teaching an NVQ in Doing Your Fucking Job every time we ask you to accomplish a simple fucking task.”

“I was just confirming that you definitely want me to lie about Fergus not being in the building.”

“Oh, Jesus. Yes, please, Mary fucking Poppins.” Adam turns to Fergus. “I’ll go down to Great George Street, start kissing arses.”

“Grovel, if you have to.”

“I’ll get down on my knees and suck Michael’s cock, if necessary. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” says Fergus, gloomily, as Adam departs.

The phone call, when it finally comes, isn’t even from Michael. Whether he’s so angry he can’t bear to speak to Fergus, or lying recumbent on a sofa somewhere too apathetic to care, is unclear. By the time Fergus puts down the phone, he’s apologised unreservedly, tried to explain that he had the best interests of the party at heart, been shouted down, and apologised a second time. It’s gone eleven and he has to be up bright and early tomorrow to make his way to the Royal Courts of Justice to await his own turn to give evidence.

 _It’s done_ , he texts Adam. _Mea culpas all round, promised I won’t do it again. We live to fuck up another day._

 _Told you I’d sort it,_ Adam replies. _Go to bed._

Sitting in front of Lord Goolding and his panel of po-faced deputies is a lot like the time Fergus was summoned to the headmaster’s study at school for his involvement in the plot that had resulted in a smashed window and a large yellow grapefruit landing squarely in the middle of the headmaster’s desk. It had sat there the whole way through the interrogation, and neither the headmaster nor Fergus had referred to it, but Fergus had had to keep his gaze averted, lest he let out a burst of involuntary laughter and damn himself accordingly.

Just thinking about it, and the way he’d said all sorts of things that had kept him out of trouble but made him look and feel a complete fool, makes him squirm. After that, he’d been regarded by the entire teaching staff as a harmless species of idiot; the surprise when he got into Oxford had been palpable, and the headmaster had told his mother, during drinks in the headmaster’s garden after that final Prizegiving, that he was certain Fergus would be a good fit for Keble, where things were not as academically rigorous as they had been at Christchurch.

Mum had impressed Fergus immensely by snapping something sharp and unkind and that had been the last time Fergus had set foot in the place, so he’d tried hard not to care what stuck-up, pedantic Mr Nelson had thought about him, anyway. It had proved to be bollocks, in any case; once he got to Keble, he'd suspected the mean-spirited arsehole hadn’t even been to Oxford at all.

All this scrolls through Fergus’ vacant, horrified brain while he staggers away from the stand - not the stand, it isn’t a sodding trial - and out into the corridor beyond the rooms where the Inquiry is being held. He’d like to take a minute to mop his brow and calm his nerves, but there are reporters milling about, so he makes for the stairs with as much dignity as he can muster and hopes he’ll be able to climb into a taxi and leave the whole miserable experience behind him without too much hassle from the press.

He’s pulled up short by the sight of the back of Adam’s head, visible around a column at the foot of the stairs. He, Phil and Emma gave evidence at the start of the afternoon session; by now, it’s already gone five o’clock.

“What are you still doing here?”

Adam doesn’t seem surprised to see him. “Waiting for you,” he says, as though this should have been obvious. “That was quick.”

Fergus shrugs miserably. “Didn’t take long to make myself look a twat. Did you see -”

“I saw.”

“Can we get the fuck out of here?”

Adam leads the way past the security desk where they surrender their passes, and turns to him, irritated, when Fergus pauses in the shadows on the threshold of the entrance hall.

“We’re not supposed to be seen together.”

“Oh, fuck off. Cal Richards can suck my balls, after the day we’ve had.”

They exit the Royal Courts of Justice with little to no dignity, stony-faced and probably looking like murderers fleeing the scene of the crime in the face of a bank of TV cameras. Adam ushers him towards a taxi and clambers in after him, and then they’re away. Fergus watches the reporters disappear from view as the taxi turns into Chancery Lane and utters a deep sigh of relief.

“How much of a twat did I sound? With the face tattoos, and the… the other embarrassing bullshit I came out with?”

“At least you didn’t build a torturous Wayne Rooney-based analogy for your own hypocrisy.”

Fergus glances at him and Adam smiles, only a little. Fergus resumes his vigil out of the window slightly less convinced of the benefits of opening the door and flinging himself into the traffic.

It takes twice as long as it ought for the taxi to make its way to Camberwell, owing to rush-hour traffic on Blackfriars Bridge. By the time the car pulls up to the kerb outside his house, Fergus is thinking longingly of an enormous glass of wine and a night slumped in front of something vapid on the telly.

One hand on the door, he scans the pavement for reporters. Thankfully, the junior moron from DoSAC remains a lesser scalp than that of the Prince of Darkness, so he can only assume they’re all camped instead on Tucker’s doorstep.

“For fuck’s sake,” he says, spotting the bins. “I painted the fucking number on. Coming in?”

Adam seems to weigh it up, before giving a weary shrug. “Want to get the PCSO recommendations done. I’ll head back to DoSAC.”

“Don’t make me feel like a twat.”

“It’s fine. The pile of shit’ll still be steaming in the morning.”

“Exactly. Go home.”

“Fuck off,” Adam says. The softness Fergus reads in his expression could probably be explained away as a symptom of extreme fatigue. “Get some sleep, yeah?”

Fergus unfolds himself onto the pavement, crumpled and sweat-stained. He fishes for something to say to convey an equivalent level of concern, but he’s so tired his words hang somewhere inarticulate behind his teeth, and Adam is frowning at him, wanting to be off. He resorts to closing the car door and tapping on the roof. The car pulls away, and he remembers the bins.

He trudges past next door’s flourishing sempervivums and starts hauling the wheelie-bin with the large, duck-egg number fifteen painted on its side in the direction of his own front gate.

How they emerge from the inquiry relatively unscathed, Adam will never fully understand. He suspects it’s a continuation of Michael’s policy of sticking his head in the sand and waiting for trouble to blow over, lest any hint of disharmony taint his precious coalition. Emma has been quietly shuffled over to the FCO, no one is sorry to see the back of Stewart, and a festive atmosphere briefly descends at the news that Malcolm Tucker will be spending the next six months at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Two months later, he’s is ensconced on Fergus’ enormous, dilapidated sofa with the draft of Fergus’ party conference speech, keeping half an eye on _Newsnight._ Fergus is crashing about in the kitchen, allegedly making them something to eat, but appearing frequently in the living room door with glass of wine in hand to heckle Dan Miller, who is delivering a performance so perfectly dead-eyed and psychotic he might as well declare himself to be a Replicant in response to Kirsty Wark’s next question about electoral reform.

“Did anyone bother checking Troy fucking Tempest for actual demonic possession?” Fergus ponders gleefully, throwing back another mouthful of sauvignon blanc.

“He’s talking a load of fucking bollocks about the Lords. Nicholson’ll have his balls on a platter.”

“Do you want a top-up?” Fergus asks, tipping his glass in Adam’s direction. There is a smell from the kitchen of something catastrophic happening to the _Taste the Difference_ pizza Adam picked up at the Sainsbury’s on Peckham Road on his way round.

He's about to regretfully decline, on the grounds that at least one of them has to be _compos mentis_ for the early train to Norwich and three hours of complaints about planning permissions tomorrow morning, when Fergus’ phone rings in the hall. He disappears to answer it and Adam can’t help but eavesdrop on the snatches of the conversation that carry over Miller’s dismal performance.

“Mum? What’s… When did this happen?… What were you doing going down there on your own?… No, I’m not getting cross - no, I’m not… How did you get back home?”

Fergus’ mum is the only person Adam has ever known to make use of Fergus’ landline. He’s met her only the once, at the party in the constituency office, after Fergus’ election. Fergus had mentioned that his parents had been old when they’d had him, but Adam had been surprised by how much older than his own parents she’d seemed. Charming, if a tad wary of Adam, and terribly proud of Fergus. He’s spoken to her on the phone plenty of times, since then, running interference on Fergus’ behalf. She’s always called him Alan, and he hasn’t had the heart to correct her.

“Have the carers been in?… Yes, fine… I’ll be there on Sunday. Yes, I will. Bye, Mum - bye.”

Fergus trudges in and sits down heavily in the armchair beside the coffee table.

“Everything alright?” Adam asks, briefly taking his eyes off the TV.

“She’s had a fall,” Fergus says grimly. “Went fucking off to the shops by herself and fell crossing the road. She says she’s fine, but she always says she’s fine.” He stares at Dan Miller’s plasticine face for a moment, and then says, “she’s getting worse. I’m going to have to put her in a home.”

Adam is casting about for something to say when the oven timer begins to sound and Fergus swears and leaps up to try to rescue the pizza.

He brings the bottle of wine back with him and Adam gives up on the speech. They prop their feet on the coffee table and watch _Later… With Jools Holland_ , swearing at Jools for ruining ‘A Message to You Rudy’ with boogie-woogie piano, until Fergus calls it a night and they stumble upstairs, still sniggering about Dan Miller. Adam says goodnight and staggers into the spare room, where he peels off most of his clothes and throws himself face down on the bed.

He sleeps through his alarm and wakes to the distant sound of the shower running, with sunlight pouring through the open curtains and a headache throbbing behind his eyes.

A month later, they’re in Birmingham.

Party Conference is the best of times and simultaneously, somehow, the worst. On the one hand, it constitutes a break from the fevered monotony of life in Westminster; on the other, some members of the party are more fervent than the Opposition in their desire to see Fergus and all his works brought low. Adam tends to spend most of his time at conference stalking the exhibition halls, keeping an ear to the ground and making veiled threats against those who might conspire to cause Fergus embarrassment.

Fergus swans about like it’s a holiday camp, gets pissed at every possible opportunity, and then descends into panic when he remembers that he has, as Junior Minister and therefore one of seven people in the party to have occupied a position within Her Majesty’s Government, got to make a speech.

“You were word perfect on the train.”

“Yes, but now I’m hungover,” Fergus argues, as though this is not his own fault.

Adam glances at him. “Why are you still wearing that tie? Here,” he says, rummaging in the wardrobe, “put this on.”

“It makes me look consumptive.”

“Well, that one makes you look like a twat, so it’s TB or looking like an arsehole who can barely dress himself in front of Michael and the rest of the jackals.”

Fergus snatches the tie out of his hand and starts loosening the one he’s wearing. “Not exactly a fucking pep talk, that, is it?”

“You’ll be fine,” Adam says, stepping in to rectify the knot that Fergus has made too tight. “Sounded great, earlier. I was convinced.”

“You wrote it.”

“So I know it’s shit, and I still thought you sounded like you meant it.”

Fergus holds out his arms as though presenting himself for inspection. “How do I look?”

The honest answer, for anyone with eyes, is that Fergus is clammy and pallid and looks like a member of a second-rate boyband gone slightly to seed. His hair needs a cut, but he refuses due to vanity about his receding hairline, and he still manages to wear a suit jacket like he’s been taken to the uniform shop by his mum and told that he’ll grow into it.

“You’ll do,” Adam says. He smiles, letting his gaze soften, and Fergus looks away, as he always does, confused and slightly pink around the edges.

He watches Fergus deliver the speech from the gallery at the back of the auditorium. It’s a competent performance; it usually is, despite Fergus’ nerves. The earnest frown and the fact he looks like he might deck you if you disagree with him have always worked in his favour. Fergus is accepting lukewarm applause when Adam’s phone vibrates in his pocket and he ducks out to answer it.

“Adam,” says Angela, her voice unusually warm for someone with the soul of a reptile. “How’s life as a political nonentity treating you?”

“Angela, how lovely to hear from you. I take it you’re in Birmingham, too, you venomous hag?”

“Watching you as we speak,” she confirms, entirely too cheerily for his liking. “Ducked out halfway through your boyfriend’s speech, I’m afraid. When you’ve heard one idiot bumble their way through fifteen minutes of ghost-written platitudes, you’ve heard them all.”

He casts an eye over the attendees milling about in the exhibition hall and spots her by Liberal Image’s stand of badges and tea towels, waving at him with a smirk.

Unlike Adam, Angela survived the Spinners and Losers fiasco with a neat sideways jump to the _Mirror,_ and for the past two years she’s been political editor there. There are few ways he would less like to spend an afternoon than letting her drip poison in his ear about Fergus, which seems to be her favourite sport, besides enticing men into her web so she can feed.

“What the fuck do you want, Angela?” he demands, when he reaches her. She’s wearing a smile that suggests she’s in possession of information Adam isn’t yet privy to.

“Can’t a girl drop in to say hello to her ex-boss and his homosexual life partner?”

“Does the virulence of your bigotry keep you warm at night, or do you still need to lie on a rock under a heat lamp before you can consume your prey?”

“Oh, well done, that one was very good,” she says. “I take it you’re not apprised of the situation with the Equality and Diversity Forum?”

Adam resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Just tell me or fuck off, Angela.”

“So you haven’t heard? There are rumours of a complaint having been made about Mannion. Everyone’s staying quiet about it, for now, because Cal Richards is threatening to break kneecaps, but DoSAC is about to be tarred with a very large, extremely antiquated brush.”

“Yes, the man who’s made it his mission to populate the Home Counties with his own bastard offspring turns out to be a misogynist. I hardly think it’s going to shake the foundations of British democracy.”

“What a shame if his fluffy, liberal coalition partner had also been observed engaging in shamefully sexist behaviour. I have it on good authority that a female lobbyist was referred to as ‘skirt’ in front of horrified members of the public.”

“Oh, come on. Have you ever heard anything that sounds more like it came straight from the mouth of Phil ‘vow of involuntary celibacy’ Smith? How is that Fergus’ problem?”

“I hear there was some inappropriate physical contact, too,” Angela says, with a disingenuous smile. “No one likes a junior minister who goes around imposing hugs on women without their consent.”

“Anyone who was there, had such an event taken place, would attest that any hugging was entirely consensual and initiated by the lobbyist in question,” Adam replies, through gritted teeth.

“Doesn’t sound good, though, does it? Fergus is supposed to be the harmless idiot they brought in to modernise things at DoSAC, make Mannion look less of a dinosaur.”

Adam casts a glance around the crowded exhibition hall. If Angela’s been holding onto this, it’s because she’s planning to break the story. These days, she manufactures her own shit, she doesn’t need to scrabble around in other people’s. “Why, exactly, are you giving me the heads-up on this?”

“I asked myself what was funnier - your boy’s head on a feminist’s pike, or watching you fall over yourselves trying to fix this. Everyone knows Fergus can’t talk to women; he’s famous for it. It’s like watching a pig trying to roller-skate.”

The problem is, there’s absolutely no argument Adam can make to refute this. Fergus is, categorically, appalling at talking to women. Adam hadn’t exactly done himself proud, either, in the exchange with the economist, but she’d taken one look at he and Fergus and sized them up for the boorish egotists their public school education had made them, then danced them into committing two billion pounds of public money that hadn’t been theirs to give, seduced by her talk of ideagasms and building themselves a legacy. He’d been grudgingly impressed, by the time the shit had hit the fan with the Treasury and he’d been forced to wheedle Fergus’ way out of his verbal agreement with the very angry, very vocal social enterprise group.

“What do you want?” he asks, while Angela takes out her phone and makes a show of ignoring him in favour of checking her messages.

“Really, Adam. Do you expect me to lisp ‘quid pro quo,’ and swirl my glass of Chianti?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, perhaps I will,” she concedes. “But not just yet. Have a lovely Conference, Adam. Best make sure Fergus doesn’t embarrass himself again.”

She slithers away into the crowd, phone attached to her ear, and Adam watches her go, wondering, not for the first time, what a woman like Angela had seen in Ollie Reeder, a man with pipe-cleaners for limbs and all the gumption of a boiled egg.

Fergus, meanwhile, has emerged from the backstage doors and is wandering over, looking in serious need of an Alka Seltzer and a handkerchief to mop his brow.

He peers at Adam hopefully. “What did you think?”

“I think between you and Mannion, it’s remarkable DoSAC isn’t literally repellent to women. It’s amazing you haven’t generated a forcefield so powerful Terri and Robyn get catapulted into the sun every time they try to come into work.” Adam rubs a hand over his face. “I’m going to see who’s speaking on the diversity panels. You need to stay out of the way.”

“Well, I’m off to some of the green policy forum stuff.”

“Fine. But for fuck’s sake, don’t hug anyone because they’ve told you you’re about to single-handedly save free market capitalism.Don’t go spunking ideagasms over anyone’s tits.”

“Yeah,” Fergus calls after him, “Peter and I are the problem.”

Angela Cartwright is a guinea pig in vaguely human form, with tiny, rodent features that settle into an expression of utter contempt whenever she senses Fergus’ presence. She’s one of the SDP old guard, a staunch feminist with decidedly left-leaning views on economics, and she views Fergus as an opportunist, amoral, ambulatory turd, with no beliefs and no backbone. Adam knows this because she told him so, once, while explaining why she would not be accepting Fergus’ invitation to visit DoSAC to discuss the impact of the carer’s pass on women from BAME backgrounds. Unluckily for everyone involved, and for Adam in particular, Michael has just promoted her, making her exactly the person he needs to get on side, if there are to be rumblings about harassment at DoSAC.

“Hi, there,” says a voice at his elbow. He turns to find a bright-eyed young woman wearing a t-shirt proclaiming _This Is What A Feminist Looks Like_ smiling up at him. “Are you here for the round table on accessibility and participation in cultural space?”

Adam swallows his honest response, because it wouldn’t do to crush the spirit of Liberal Youth, especially when it’s wearing a t-shirt two sizes too small, the word ‘feminist’ stretched so tightly across its chest that he can make out the pattern on its bra through the fabric. “Adam Kenyon, special advisor to Fergus Williams, Minister for Social Affairs and Citizenship. I was hoping to speak to Angela.”

“Oh, she’s on the panel til six. Can I help?”

Adam gives her what he’s been led to believe is a charming smile. “Well, it’s a ministerial thing. You know, I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”

She looks at him steadily and then extends a hand. “Nice to meet you. Rebecca Morrison, special advisor to Angela Cartwright, Minister for Equalities and Women. So, you know, you wouldn’t have to kill me. Angela’s only been in post a few weeks, must be why we haven’t bumped into one another yet. How is it over at DoSAC? Must be quite different from how we’re finding things at Equalities, what with Fergus only being Junior Minister.”

Adam shakes her hand, unable to tell whether he’s overcome with loathing or desire. Fortunately, he’s saved from having to decide by Fergus stomping over to them with a frown on his face.

“There’s a fringe thing at a bar up the road tonight,” he says, apparently addressing Adam, but with his eyes mostly on the front of Rebecca’s t-shirt. Adam steps on his foot before Fergus can preemptively undo all his hard work in persuading Angela that Fergus isn’t a sex pest, and Fergus frowns at him. “What was that for? Anyway, it’s the environment lot, a couple of speakers and a truckload of booze. Want to bunk off early and get a decent table?”

“Fergus,” Adam says, with one eye on their audience, who has folded her arms and is regarding them with amusement. “I’m literally working.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing all afternoon,” says Fergus, scowling.

“Look, you go. Text me where you are, later.”

“Fine. Don’t blame me when you get suckered into joining in with the fucking sing-song.”

“I enjoy Glee Club,” Rebecca says mildly, earning herself a glare. “The coalition mix of ‘Making Your Mind Up’ last year was a triumph.”

“Yeah, somehow I think I’ll be alright if I manage to avoid being strong-armed into watching Michael’s stand-up routine,” Adam says, and then adds, to Fergus, “I’ll come and find you later, alright.”

“Fine,” he replies. “See you later.”

Rebecca watches him go, and then says, “It never ceases to amaze me, how many of them just see this whole weekend as a jolly. We’ve had actual fucking work to do.”

Adam swallows his knee-jerk urge to defend Fergus’ honour and shoots her a smile. He hopes it implies that he’s very much part of her ‘us against the Ministers’ club.

“Anyway, you wanted to see Angela,” she says. She checks her watch. “Look, it’s half five already, she’ll be finished soon, but then we’re all supposed to be going out to get something to eat. Don’t suppose you want to tag along? We’re going to a balti place up the road.”

Adam would rather stick cocktail sticks under his fingernails than attend a meal with the lentils and body hair brigade, but there is a greater cause at stake than his own enjoyment of the next couple of hours of his Sunday night. He plasters on another smile. “Count me in.”

 _Are you coming to the environment thing?_ Fergus texts, while Adam is watching the last of the speakers on Angela’s diversity panel. _At Bank - only 5 mins walk._

Adam turns away from the stage to text his reply. _Taking the Equalities lobby to dinner._

Three dots chart the pause before Fergus responds. _All of them, or just the one with the tits?_

 _It’s a shit job,_ Adam replies, _but someone’s got to do it._

He puts his phone back in his pocket, after that, reasoning that Fergus is old enough to find himself dinner and attend a fringe event about clean energy without getting himself into trouble.

It turns out that dinner with the Equalities lobby means a long table in a very nice Indian restaurant, over which a number of terribly earnest conversations are taking place. Angela is seated at the other end of the table from Adam, which is unfortunate, because he’d hoped to steer the conversation round to Fergus’ feminist credentials and fabricate wildly, and then invite her to for a visit to DoSAC to discuss the carer’s pass again. As it is, he’s stuck between a severe-looking woman with green hair, who’s come to conference representing the Equalities Trust, and a bearded man who is so softly spoken Adam has to lean almost entirely into his personal space to make out what he’s saying. The whole business is exhausting. On the plus side, Adam’s balti is superb. He takes a photo of it to taunt Fergus with, later.

As they get up to leave, Adam intends to corner Angela and charm her into looking favourably upon Fergus’ record with women’s issues in the constituency. Given that she’s looking at him, as he approaches, like a particularly revolting species of bacterium, he imagines the odds are not in his favour. He’s almost relieved when Rebecca interjects to tell him that they’re late to a drinks reception held by Birmingham Liberal Women and begins to usher Angela in the direction of a taxi.

“What a shame we didn’t have time to talk, Adam,” says Angela, as she sails past him and into the waiting car. “I’d invite you to join us, but… well, frankly, I can’t think of a worse way to spend an evening, than dealing with the women’s group _and_ listening to you bullshit furiously about Fergus’ mishap with that pretty young economist. Have a lovely night.”

“Bye, Adam,” Rebecca says, shrugging apologetically. “Email me about the carer’s pass.”

“Fucking hell,” Adam mutters, watching them depart. A passing taxi drives through a puddle and sends a tide of murky water over his shoes.

The bar Fergus has directed him to is close to the Conference Centre, and Adam is glad the walk is short, because his socks are damp and Broad Street is awash with hen parties. Feeling vaguely hunted, he strides past the Pitcher and Piano and crosses the road to avoid the smokers outside the Slug and Lettuce. He spots the bar hosting the environment event at a hundred paces, because scattered at the tables outside, beneath the space heaters, are up-and-coming party functionaries and activists, in various states of inebriation.

The doorman waves him through when Adam flashes his delegate’s badge. At one end of the bar is a microphone and PA system with a Green Lib Dems banner behind it. Adam scans the room and spots Fergus almost immediately; he’s taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and is slumped at the bar with his hand around a bottle of expensive lager. From this distance, Adam can see that his tie’s loose and he’s undone one button too many at the collar of his shirt. He’s a sozzled mess - a familiar sight at conference - and, to Adam’s alarm, he’s talking intently to someone far too young for the slightly dazzled smile Fergus always adopts when anyone displays an unexpected, prolonged interest in him.

The youth in question might, Adam supposes, be in his twenties, but he’s certainly not twenty-five. Fergus’ expression, slightly glassy-eyed and loose about the edges, suggests that he might be too pissed to have noticed, or to care. As though it couldn’t be any worse, there’s the yellow lanyard of a press pass looped around the idiot’s neck. Adam doesn’t recognise him; would put money on him representing one of the Liberal Youth-affiliated student blogs.

He’s weighing up marching over to stage an intervention, when the youth slips off his stool and murmurs something into Fergus’ ear, then saunters off in the directions of the toilets. Fergus’ eyes follow him speculatively.

Adam cuts past a couple of dancing activists and deposits himself in Fergus’ eye line.

“Adam,” he says, blinking slowly.

“Fergus. Time to go.”

Fergus frowns. “Oh, fuck off -”

Adam takes pains to keep his voice low and only subtly threatening in tone. “You’re one drink from letting a fucking twink with a press pass blow you in the loos. You need to leave, now, while it’s still ambiguous enough that you can claim it was just a harmless, professional conversation with a loyal party supporter.”

“I'm capable of making my own decisions, thank you very much,” hisses Fergus, in the voice he uses whenever he’s about to be a vicious bitch about something.

“Are you?” Adam snaps. “Really, Fergus? Because I’ve just watched you let yourself get chatted up by a foetus.”

“Well, thank Christ you were here to save the day,” Fergus replies, entirely too loudly, for a room full of curious bystanders. “Otherwise, I might just have taken leave of my senses and let him fuck me.”

Adam shushes him and takes him by the elbow. “Shut up, you moron. I’m getting you a taxi.”

“Fuck _off_ , Adam,” Fergus says, wrenching his arm away. Suddenly he’s sounds as though he’s seconds from punching Adam in the face. “Just fuck off, alright?”

He shoves himself off the bar stool and stalks off unsteadily in the direction of the exit, and Adam hurries after him. Outside, there’s a taxi rank, and Fergus stumbles his way over to it. He hurls himself into the first taxi waiting in the queue, and Adam climbs in after him and shuts the door, slumping into the seat at Fergus’ side. Fergus stares determinedly out of the window.

"Where to?" says the cabbie, eyeing them disinterestedly in the mirror. Adam gives him the name of the hotel.

For a long, poisonous minute, they sit in silence while the taxi pulls into the traffic and waits at a set of lights. Then, low and vicious, without looking at him, Fergus mutters, “How fucking stupid do you think I am? Of course I wasn’t going to let myself be seduced by some fucking student journalist. Do you actually think I’m an idiot?”

Adam shoots a glance at the cabbie, but his eyes are on the road and the radio is humming quietly, too low for it to be possible to make out the music.

“‘Scuse me, could you turn the radio up, mate?” he asks. The cabbie reaches over and turns up the volume. “Not here,” he says, shortly, to Fergus, as quietly as he’s able. “If you want a row, we can have one at the hotel.”

Fergus snorts contemptuously. “You’re either a fucking hypocrite,” he says, “or a homophobe. Which one is it?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You’ve been out pawing at that Equalities woman all night, and she’s at least ten years too young for you.”

“Ouch,” Adam says, rolling his eyes.

Fergus rounds on him, his eyes blazing, but the fight drops out of him almost immediately. Adam watches him wilt, horrified and fascinated, because he has no idea what’s going on. “You’re a bit late, if you’re concerned about my honour,” Fergus says, in the end. “Or about me committing indiscretions in a public toilet.”

Adam shoots a horrified glance at the cabbie, but he’s whistling along to Capital FM, oblivious.

“He can’t hear anything,” Fergus says, dismissively. “I could tell you all about it, if I wanted, and he wouldn’t hear a thing.” His words are slurred, but he manages to look Adam more or less in the eye. “Would you enjoy it, Adam, if I did?”

On the other side of the partition, the cabbie is still whistling. It’s on the tip of Adam’s tongue to snap, _of course I wouldn’t fucking enjoy it, why would I want you to_ \- but Fergus is already carrying on, his eyes intent on Adam’s face. 

“It was at Quo Vadis. You remember when we were aiming for Backbench Business, and you sent me out networking? Didn’t fucking specify what methods you wanted me to use, did you?”

Adam gapes at him, aghast. “Don’t fucking pin this is on me, whatever it is.”

“Fuck off, it’s always you,” says Fergus. “Go here, wear this, don’t say that. Well, I went to Quo fucking Vadis, because you said I fucking had to. You got me that fucking invitation, and then Jasper fucked off and left me there, and Julius just so happened to be there, too.”

“Julius… Julius fucking _Nicholson_?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Fergus snaps. “I was fucking miserable, alright? And Julius was very kind.”

“I bet he fucking was -“

“Fuck off, Adam. He bought me a drink and he _listened._ We had a fair amount in common, difficult though that might be to believe. He fucking listened, and he was nice to me, and by then I was pissed, and he followed me to the toilets. It wasn’t my finest hour, judgement-wise, and I thought about telling you, just in case someone found out, but Julius seemed to think it wouldn’t be an issue, and to be honest I just wanted to get off with someone -”

“So you picked Lord fucking Baldemort of Wankchester?”

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ judge me,” Fergus snarls, which makes about as little sense as Fergus choosing Nicholson as the object of his fleeting affections. “You don’t get to judge me about this, you bastard. If you want to know, it was fucking great, actually. There are sofas in the loos at Quo Vadis, and I got him sprawled out on one, got on my knees, and sucked him off so hard he saw fucking stars. Let him pull my hair, come in my mouth, the whole nine fucking yards.”

Adam is frozen in his seat, watching Fergus spit these ludicrous, maddening words at him. With horror, he realises he’s getting hard, his pulse jumping at the idea of Fergus’ mouth on Julius Nicholson’s cock.What about Nicholson, he wants to know, but can’t ask. What about that arrogant prick? Did he put his effete, pudgy hands on you underneath your oversized suit jacket?

Fergus’ eyes are narrowed; he’s drunk, flushed and spiteful, watching Adam panic with grim satisfaction. The taxi rounds a corner and the hotel looms into view. The radio cuts out abruptly as the car pulls up at the kerb.

“Fifteen quid,” says the cabbie, catching Adam’s eye in the rearview mirror.

It takes him moments that feel like aeons to scrabble in his pocket for his wallet and fling a twenty pound note in the cabbie’s direction, instructing him to keep the change.

“Have a good night,” the cabbie replies, inscrutable behind the plastic partition. Adam wonders whether he ought to give him another twenty. Five pounds is hardly likely to be enough to buy his silence, if he’s heard any of Fergus’ outburst.

“Get out of the fucking car,” he snaps. Fergus is lolling against the door looking vaguely nauseated without making any effort to open it.

Once they’re on the pavement, he takes Fergus’ elbow in his hand and steers him firmly in the direction of the entrance. The last thing they need is for Fergus to be photographed returning to the hotel too drunk to stand. “Just make it to the lift, for fuck’s sake.”

Thankfully, they cross the lobby without attracting attention from the milling rabble of journos and party delegates, and an empty lift arrives as soon as Adam presses the button to summon one. Fergus stumbles inside, sagging gratefully against the mirrored wall, and Adam takes the opposite corner, jabbing the button for their floor and getting the doors closed before anyone can attempt to join them.

Fergus is a mess; the bravado of the taxi seems to have seeped out of him during the walk through the hotel.“Adam,” he says, miserably, lifting one trembling hand to cover his mouth.

If he’s sick, Adam is going to leave him there, and if Angela’s still skulking about and puts him on the front cover of tomorrow’s _Mirror_ , he won’t give a shit. “Don’t,” he says shortly.

The lift doors open, but Fergus is still sagging against the wall, so Adam hauls him out and frogmarches him down the corridor.“Key,” he demands. Fergus fumbles in his pocket and Adam snatches the card out of his hand and gets the door open. “Go to bed, sleep it off.”

Fergus nods and trudges into the room, slumping dejectedly on the side of the bed. Adam looks at him, with his too-long fringe and his crumpled suit.

“Sorry,” Fergus mumbles, sounding like he might be on the verge of exhausted, drunken tears.

“For fuck’s sake, Fergus,” he says firmly. “Go to sleep.”

He closes the door and waits there for a moment, listening to the thump of Fergus' shoes hitting the carpet as he kicks them off, one after the other.

It’s barely midnight and Adam’s jittery and turned on, like he’s been pulling a Red Bull-fueled all-nighter and needs to get laid. He gets the door to his own room open and kicks it shut behind him, flinging his jacket onto the bed. For a moment, he contemplates distracting himself with booze from the minibar and whatever porn he can find on the TV, but self-delusion has never been one of Adam’s better qualities. Know thyself, he thinks, grimly, unbuckling his belt.

He could have spent some time working himself up to it, drawing it out, but he’s tired and unnerved by the unhappiness on Fergus’ clammy face when he had shut the door on him. In the end, he braces one hand on the adjoining door to Fergus’ room and just fucking goes for it, pulling himself off hard and dry, imagining Fergus on his knees with his lips wrapped round a cock that doesn’t belong to Julius fucking Nicholson.

Fergus wakes to the memory of having done something appalling the previous night, but unable to pinpoint exactly what it might have been. The last time he drank this heavily, he was ten years younger and ended the night in the bed of someone he didn’t know - _fuck_.

He lets out a groan. What the fuck had he been thinking? What the fuck had Adam been thinking, sitting there and letting him talk to him like that? He has a hazy recollection of Adam’s stormy, shell-shocked expression, the way he’d shifted his jacket across his lap, as though he’d thought Fergus might not notice. As though he thought he could pretend Fergus didn't know exactly what he was doing.

He can’t remember getting out of the taxi, but he remembers getting back up to the room. Adam had held him against the wall with a hand on his hip; it had felt like a brand, hot and heavy through his shirt. Christ, what a fucking mess. Still, if Adam had just fucking touched him properly; if Adam had pressed him against the wall and kissed him… Fergus pushes his face into the pillows and wishes he hadn’t let himself think about it. Of course Adam hadn’t fucking touched him, and he was a fucking idiot for pushing things in the direction he had.

His phone chirrups and he digs in the pocket of his jacket, which is abandoned in a heap beside him on the bed.

 _I’ve got pills,_ the message reads. _Coming down for breakfast?_

Fergus glares at his phone. He’s sincerely fucking grateful to be handed a Get Out of Jail card, but this is Adam all fucking over. Pretending to be an impenetrable enigma, when they both know Fergus spent the latter portion of the previous night talking him into an inconvenient stiffy.

_Give me 15 minutes._

Quarter of an hour later, he’s out of the shower and drying his hair with a towel when there’s a knock at the door. It’s Adam, leaning against the doorframe and brandishing two small packets of painkillers.

“Thought you might need these,” he says, holding them out. “Take two of each.”

Fergus accepts them and moves to allow Adam into the room. He’s painfully aware that his hair is still damp, his shirt untucked, and he isn’t wearing any socks. Adam appears not to care, throws his jacket on the bed and settles himself into the armchair by the window.

“How fucked are you, on a scale of one to incapable of getting on a train?”

Fergus rolls his eyes, tosses the pills onto the bed, and resumes towelling his hair. “Barely a four. Are there any glasses?”

Adam goes to look without argument, which in itself is a sign of things being amiss. He returns when he can’t find a glass in the bathroom and grabs a mug from the tray with the tiny kettle standing on it, and then appears in Fergus’ eye line moments later, offering it to him, filled with water. He fiddles with the packets and pops two of each kind of pill into Fergus’ outstretched palm.

“You’re chirpy,” Fergus observes, as Adam lowers himself back into the armchair and grabs the TV remote from the dressing table. He can hear himself being a bitch, but doesn’t seem to be able to prevent it.

Adam shrugs without taking his eyes off the TV, flicking through channels until he finds News 24. “Went for a run, got some work done on the citizenship tests stuff.”

Fergus makes a noise of disgust.

He shuffles back into the bathroom to hang up the towel, avoiding looking himself in the eye in the bathroom mirror. If this is the way Adam wants to play things, he’s more than capable of holding up his end. The curl of disappointment in his stomach is just because he’d thought perhaps he’d feel better when he finally got round to getting the truth about Nicholson off his chest.

“Get a move on, yeah?” says Adam, appearing in the bathroom door. “Breakfast’s only til nine.”

Fergus looks at him with the damp towel hanging uselessly in his hands, and thinks he ought to say something. Probably an apology.It’s too warm in the bathroom and he’s far too hungover; the steam from the shower’s making him light-headed. Adam’s a colleague and a friend and Fergus’ stupid, drunken rambling last night amounted to sexual harassment. Adam is staring at him, his eyes on Fergus’ warm face. He ought to apologise.

“I haven’t been that drunk in years,” he says.

For a moment, Adam doesn’t reply, and Fergus wonders whether something is about to happen. Something violent, or something involving a hand-job up against the bathroom sink but, either way, something that would indisputably be a terrible mistake. Adam nods, his mouth twisting into a strange, rueful smile. “Don’t be a twat about it,” he says.

He turns in the direction of the bedroom door, and for an insane, thrilling moment Fergus is certain he’s about to walk over and lock it. Instead, he reaches for his jacket. “See you down there,” he says, over his shoulder, and Fergus watches him go, still clutching the damp towel and sweating through his only clean shirt.


	8. Chapter 8

**Norwich, 2014**

Fergus is on a train bound for Norwich, and he’s got no one to keep him company. He’s finished his lukewarm coffee, reviewed the response from the Home Office to his request for a review of a constituent’s immigration case, and now he’s staring out of the window wondering whether he’ll be able to sneak away mid-afternoon without Carole reporting him to Adam.

It’s Adam’s fault he’ll be there on his own, anyway. (At this point, Fergus is prepared to admit, albeit only to himself, that he’s being childish about the whole thing. It’s not as though he's incapable of getting through weekend surgery without him. It’s not as though it’s actually in Adam’s job description, to give up his Saturdays to listen to the usual suspects reel off their list of complaints every week).

The train is busy. Fergus has already had to surrender the seat next to him to an irritable-looking woman his mother’s age, who had tutted at him until he moved his bag, given him a look which stated that she knew exactly who he was and did not approve, and has ignored him entirely ever since. It’s not as though he minds being left alone to gaze at the gloomy autumnal landscape and nurse the dregs of his coffee, but he’s filled with horror at the thought of having to ask her to move so he can go to the toilet.

 _Enjoying your lie in?_ he texts, as the train rolls out of Chelmsford, irritated when he doesn't get a reply.

They’re held at Ipswich for thirty minutes for debris on the line, with the result that, when they finally reach Norwich, Fergus has to overcome his reticence about being impolite to the woman who reminds him of his mother and insist that she let him off the train before she can wrestle her suitcase out of the luggage rack. As he jogs down the platform, he imagines she’s preparing to tell all her friends about the rudeness of the Liberal MP who had ignored her for an hour and a half, slumped in his seat like a crumpled, used handkerchief, and then failed to help her with her luggage. He suspects it’s an omen for the rest of the day to come.

He makes it to the Assembly Rooms with five minutes to spare, flinging a tenner at the taxi driver and taking the steps two at a time.

“What time d’you call this?” Carole calls, cheerfully, when he tumbles through the swing doors.

She’s already finished putting out the chairs, and there’s a steaming mug of tea waiting on the trestle table that doubles as Fergus’ surgery desk.

“Piss off. Is the tea for me?”

Carole nods. She’s got the photocopied list of local councillors’ contact details blu-tacked and is sticking it to the table, between the stack of leaflets about local library closures and the reminder that abusive language or threatening behaviour will not be tolerated. “Got the caramel digestives, too,” she says, gesturing over her shoulder. “In the kitchen. I can open them now, if you like.”

Adam’s opinions about Fergus consuming biscuits before midday notwithstanding, Fergus would very much like Carole to open the digestives. She disappears into the kitchen while he hangs his jacket over the back of one of the plastic chairs and takes a seat. When she returns, she’s bearing a plate piled with biscuits; she offers one to Fergus and then places them on the lid of the upright piano, well out of his reach.

“How’s your mum?” she asks, handing him the tea.

Fergus considers giving an honest answer: _she hates the home I’ve abandoned her in and most of the time she calls me by my dad’s name, but that’s probably for the best, given that she probably hates me, too, for leaving her there_. This isn’t the answer people want, though, when they ask a question like ‘how’s your mum?’, so he grimaces in what he hopes is a light-hearted manner and mutters, “She’s fine.”

“That’s good,” Carole says, with a look of sympathy that makes Fergus want to pour boiling hot tea all over himself. He ducks his head to check his phone in the hope that Carole will take the hint and leave him alone.

 _Fuck off, I’m working_ , Adam has replied. He’s followed this with a photograph of the river with the Royal Naval College in the background. _Early run - saw the dolphin._

The dolphin in question had been spotted near London Bridge five days ago and Adam had been hilariously delighted to catch sight of it on one of his runs past King’s Stairs Gardens. Fergus peers at the photograph, but can’t distinguish anything in the turbid water. He replies with a message that reads, _Alright, perv,_ followed by the emoji of three droplets of water.

“Who’ve we got?” he asks, around a mouthful of biscuit.

Carole sighs. “Who haven’t we. Bill’s back about Trident; I tried to put him off ’til after Christmas, but he wasn’t having it. I’ve put him at the end, so we can say we’re closing and get him out.”

“What about the immigration case?”

“Mrs Campbell? Top of the bill.”

“Right.” Fergus casts his eye down the list Carole places in front of him. “A quiet one.”

“Yeah, about that -”

Mrs Campbell, a woman whose determination to hold the Home Office to account for their mishandling of her immigration case is matched only by her reputation for punctuality, sails through the swing doors, admitting the sound of church bells striking the hour.

“Good morning, Mr Williams!” she says, smiling widely at Fergus as though he were a long-lost nephew. “Carole, it’s lovely to see you.”

“Come on in, Mrs Campbell,” Fergus replies, standing to shake her hand. “Have a seat.”

“How are you, Leticia?” Carole asks. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you. I hope I won’t be here long; I’ve told them again that I’ve got a caseworker, and they’re to send all of it through to you.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” agrees Fergus. He does his best to adopt the expression Adam has coached him in, the one that always seems to settle somewhere between intent concern and accidental impatience. “Let me update you on the response I received from the Home Office on Thursday.”

By two o’clock, Fergus is tired and exasperated and keen to high-tail it back to London on the next available train. Fortunately, it being the last surgery of the year, Carole has kept the diary clear and there are no engagements at sports clubs or Christmas fairs at the local comprehensive to show his face at before he’s allowed to make his escape.

“Before you go,” Carole says, as he shrugs on his coat and scarf, “I was going to warn you that the students have been down here all week, again. There’ll probably be a few of them out there. They’ve got rid of you as Guy Fawkes on the bonfire and put your face on the arse end of a turkey.”

“Fucking brilliant,” he mutters. “I’ll have to take my chances. Have a good Christmas, Carole.”

“Merry Christmas. Tell Adam I hope Santa brings him a lump of coal for weasling out of coming with you. You’ll have to come for Sunday lunch in the new year.”

“Will do.”

The affection Carole has cultivated for Adam over the last four and a half years, based entirely on their shared propensity for arch foul-mouthedness and disdain for the calibre of the local press, remains bewildering and leaves Fergus feeling vaguely slighted by comparison. He supposes he ought to be grateful Carole hasn’t held him single-handedly responsible for Michael clambering into bed with JB for the last four years, the way the other councillors have contrived to.

He emerges into a frigid wind and pauses to tuck the ends of his scarf into the collar of his coat. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spots his own face on a roast turkey’s backside, on a poster held aloft in the hands of the chief of his tormentors. He ducks his head and hopes he can escape before the students look up from their conversation over steaming takeaway cups of coffee, but they spot him almost immediately and shoulder their placards once more, advancing on him, a small, raucous armada.

“Lib Dems out!” shouts one of them gamely, garnering startled, resentful looks from passersby.

Fergus is intending to shoulder his way past and flee in the direction of the station, but Sam is bearing down on him, making escape impossible. Sam is a postgraduate now, apparently so incensed by Fergus’ betrayal after his work on the election campaign that he’s dedicated the past four years of his university life to making Fergus’ existence as miserable as possible. Fergus suspects he decided to stay at UAE for his postgraduate degree just to torment him, and the sight of his face at constituency meetings has become enough to give Fergus an immediate migraine.

“Hurrying back to Westminster, Minister?” Sam calls, wiggling that fucking turkey in Fergus’ direction.

The problem is, it’s been a very long morning, and Fergus is just angry enough about the Home Office’s shambolic immigration system that he finds himself unable to keep his mouth shut.

Fergus is shivering on the platform beneath a sign that tells him his train is going to be twenty minutes late, when his phone rings.

“Tell me you’ve had a shittier day than me,” he says, by way of greeting.

“I almost certainly haven’t,” says Adam, sounding smug. “Five hours with Twatface and I’ve beaten him into fucking submission. We’re taking the lead on the fourth sector pathfinders.”

“Great.” Fergus squints into the distance along the tracks and wonders whether sheer force of will and the pressing need to get out of Norwich might prompt his train to arrive faster.

“How did it go with Mrs Campbell?”

“Same as fucking usual. The case worker’s a waste of space; I’ve got Carole getting a lawyer involved, just to avoid any more fucking about.”

“What’s the hold-up this time?”

“All the bullshit with the landing cards,” says Fergus, putting his back to the platform so their conversation is afforded a little privacy by the billboard advertising cheap return flights to the Seychelles for Christmas. Chance would be a fine fucking thing, Fergus reflects mournfully. 

“They’ve definitely been binned?”

“Jettisoned the lot in 2010; Postman fucking Pat gave the order, and then Mary Drake actioned it, after the election. The whole lot, destroyed. The only other documentation Mrs Campbell’s got is a fucking swimming certificate from when she did the two hundred metres in 1975.”

“Are you taking it to Drake?”

“What’s she going to say, ‘terribly sorry I authorised the destruction of the only proof these people have of their right to remain, I swear I’m not secretly a massive fucking racist’?”

Adam makes a noise of agreement and Fergus wonders, briefly, what he’s up to, whether he’s stretched out on the sofa in front of the telly enjoying his Saturday afternoon, the bastard.

“Anyway, we’ve got bigger problems than Scary Mary’s fucking hostile environment,” he says glumly.

“What sort of problems? The kind where I have to break out the punishment beatings, or the kind where I have to kiss arses?”

“The second one,” says Fergus. “Possibly a bit of the first.”

Adam sighs. “Just fucking tell me, so I can start breaking kneecaps.”

“There was a pack of students waiting for me, on my way out of surgery. Carole says they’ve been on the high street all week, fucking waiting for me.”

“You’ve dealt with the students before.”

“Yeah, well, I was pissed off, wasn’t I, about all the stuff with the Home Office. And then I’d had Bill in about Trident. And Sam started on me, again.”

“What the fuck did you do?”

“I might have told them that the tuition fees are wasted on them, anyway, because they’re never at lectures, they’re always just fucking hanging around haranguing me -”

“Fuck’s sake, Fergus.”

“I know, alright. But it’s fucking true. You’d think if they gave a shit they’d be at Hathaway’s door hassling him about the fucking manifesto -”

“So you accused the students of being a waste of the fees we’re making them pay - anything for the pensioners? Tell them they should all be euthanised to save the NHS the bother?”

“Fuck you. Where were you? You’re supposed to stop me from fucking these things up -”

“You’re a fucking government minister! You’re supposed to be able to set foot out of your front door without inserting the entire thing into your fucking mouth!”

“Fuck off, Adam. It’s been a shitty day, alright?”

There’s a pause. Fergus is sure he can hear the rugby on the TV in the background. “Are you on your way home?”

“Delayed - getting in late.”

“I’ll do some damage control with the SU, see if Lib Youth can step in.”

“Okay,” says Fergus. Then, because Adam sounds mildly irritated to have his afternoon with the rugby curtailed, “Thanks.”

“Don’t fucking push it,” Adam says. Fergus likes to think he’s smiling, but it doesn’t much sound like it.

The Home Office Christmas party - any Christmas party - is not Fergus’ idea of a good time. It’s an unusually up-market affair this year, for a civil service-organised do, by which Fergus means there’s Costco almost-Prosecco instead of Costco not-exactly-Cava, and the nibbles consist of tiny, salted crackers in an array of festive shapes and something inventive involving smoked salmon, in lieu of the usual platter of flabby cocktail sausages and sweaty cheese on sticks.

He’s helping himself to another handful of diminutive biscuits and draining his glass of fizz, keeping a weather eye on the horizon in the hope of avoiding a confrontation with Mary Drake, when a firm hand grasps him by the elbow and a voice hisses, “What have you heard?”

“Fucking hell! Fucking - Angela - what the fuck do you want?”

Angela is glaring at him from her less than imposing height, her guinea-pig features screwed into an expression of familiar disdain. “I want to know what you’ve heard from Michael.”

Fergus very nearly laughs in her face. It’s been nearly three years since Michael last voluntarily looked in Fergus’ direction, never mind deigning to communicate with him without the necessary intermediary of two Spads and a ten-foot pole. “Well, what have you heard?”

“Don’t fucking play this game with me, Fergus,” she hisses. “Tell me what you know about the reshuffle.”

Fergus chokes on his ersatz Prosecco. “The what?”

Angela fixes him with an assessing glare, whiskers twitching. “You mean, you don’t know about it, either?”

“Oh, the _reshuffle_ ,” Fergus says, tossing his empty glass onto the table behind him. “I know everything there fucking is to know about that.”

He attempts to execute a survey of the room while getting the fuck away from her as swiftly as possible, searching for Adam’s grey hair above the sea of mingling, be-tinselled heads. There’s no sign of him, of course. Fergus should have known. Adam has a knack for this, leaving Fergus alone at drinks receptions to go and smoke or take drugs or have a shag in the toilets with the cool kids. Sometimes, he manages all three and saunters back an hour later looking rumpled and smug. Fergus has never, ever managed to pull at an office party, not even when he was in Swindon, where desperation was a constant state of existence for everyone unfortunate enough to find themselves working there.

Heading into the corridor, he spots Adam emerging from the toilets, dabbing at his nose.

He tries not to run, aware it makes him look like a duck wearing a pencil skirt. Adam’s face, when he spots him, is flushed, his eyes bright and dark. He’s trying to smile at Fergus’ approach, but Fergus preempts whatever he’s about to say by taking him by the arm and propelling him in the opposite direction.

“Fergus!” Adam protests. “What the fuck?”

Fergus spots a tiny departmental kitchen and shoves Adam inside, stumbling after him and slamming the door.

“While you’ve been snorting half the fucking GDP of Colombia,” he snaps, “I’ve had Angela fucking Carter asking me about the fucking reshuffle.”

Adam squints at Fergus as though looking at him through a kaleidoscope. “Angela Cartwright,” he says. “Angela Carter’s the one who writes the books about fairy stories. I think she’s dead.”

“Thank you very fucking much, _Book at Bedtime_. I’ve had it up to my tits all day with J.B.’s fucking suicide pact with the anti-EU brigade, and now Angela fuckingCartwright’s asking me whether I’ve heard any whispers about Michael giving us all a juggle, too. Why the fuck would I know anything about it? I’m only a fucking minister of Her Majesty’s Government. Why would anyone bother to keep me informed?"

He pauses, one hand to his forehead, because it feels as though he might actually be in the grip of an aneurism. Adam has the audacity to smile at him, in that sly, coked-up way of his. Fergus fucking hates him when he’s in this mood. It’s a small kitchen, and Adam’s burning up, putting out heat Fergus can feel from half a foot away.

“There’s not going to be a reshuffle,” he says calmly, with what Fergus can only assume is unwarranted confidence, because Angela had sounded frantic enough to have heard something concrete. “Michael’s spent four and a half years sitting on his thumbs, he’s not exactly going to pull one of them out at this late stage and start smearing the shit around, is he?”

“Good. Because if there _is_ a reshuffle, I’m fucked, aren’t I? We’re all fucked. And if Michael thinks I’m going to let him give me the shitty handshake and send me off into fucking oblivion, he can find another sacrificial victim, because I am _this close_ to telling him to fuck off and taking myself off to a lay-by on the A11. At least lorry drivers would have the decency to pay me for my trouble while they _fucked me_."

Adam is staring at him with an air of not having listened to a word Fergus has said. Fergus is about to tell him to fuck off until he’s sobered up enough to be of fucking use, when Adam’s eyes drop, unmistakably, to his mouth. There’s a long, teetering moment, in which Adam’s eyes dance over the shocked curve of his lips, and then they flicker up to meet his gaze again. Fergus’ breath catches in his throat. Twenty fucking years, he thinks bitterly, and he has to be coked up at a Christmas party to do it.

Adam ducks his head and catches Fergus’ mouth with his own. His hands are hot at Fergus’ waist and propel him backwards into - Christ, the fridge, Adam’s kissing him up against the fridge in a Home Office kitchen. Fergus clutches at him lest he lose his footing and Adam makes a ragged, punched-out sound, pushing it determinedly onto his tongue.

For a moment, it’s absolute fucking perfection. Adam’s a hard, insistent line against him, nudging him backwards until he has nowhere to go, hauling him closer, pressing a knee in between his thighs like he wants Fergus to ride it, like he wants to fuck Fergus up against the fridge.

Fergus gets hands on his shoulders and shoves him away.“What the _fuck_ was that?” he demands.

Adam regards him warily. His chest’s heaving and there are dark patches of sweat showing on his shirt. His lips quirk into a wry smile. “Well, if I have to give you the talk about the two daddy penguins who want to make an egg -”

“You - Jesus Christ, Adam!” Fergus drags a hand over his mouth, hoping Adam can’t tell that it’s shaking. They’re practically in public, how can Adam be so fucking stupid? “This isn’t - you’re not -”

Adam stares at him. “All evidence to the fucking contrary,” he says slowly. “Don’t be a twat about it -”

“Fuck off!” Fergus shoves his hands into his hair. “What the fuck was all the - all the - the ‘in it for the pussy’ bullshit? What was that fucking in aid of?”

“Did the concept of batting for both teams not reach the Home Counties at any point in the last forty fucking years? Jesus, Fergus. It doesn’t have to be a big fucking deal.”

“Oh, no, of course not,” says Fergus, aware that he’s beginning to sound hysterical. “I’m sorry - you - my special advisor, my best fucking _friend,_ just tried to _fuck me in a Home Office kitchen_ \- ”

The thing is, Fergus is so angry he’s concerned he might start to cry. It’s always been his problem, when faced with unexpected emotions: it comes out as tears, or he’s tearing into things with his fists. He can’t fucking stop the ugly, clumsy things that fall out of him, when he’s taken by surprise. Adam should know this, so why is he staring at him like he’s a specimen on a Petri dish?

“Oh, come on,” says Adam. “Really?”

“Between Michael, who’s trying to sack me, and the entire fucking British voting public, who want me fucking _dead_ , friends are fairly fucking thin on the ground at the moment. So thanks for fucking it up, Adam.”

“Jesus, I’m fucking sorry -“ 

"Can you just fuck off?”

Adam’s still staring at him, frowning like he can’t make sense of Fergus not already being on his knees, as though he'd assumed Fergus would be grateful for his beneficence in affording him this opportunity to suck his cock.

“Just fucking - go home and sober up. Try not to launch yourself at anyone between here and a fucking taxi - I’ve got more than enough to deal with, without you facing a fucking tribunal.” Fergus can’t bear to look at him anymore, with that stupid, shocked expression on his face. He gets the door handle beneath his palm and yanks the door open. “Look, just - don’t bother coming in tomorrow.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake - Ferg! Fergus!”

“Fuck off, Adam!”

“ _You_ fuck off,” shouts Adam, at the back of Fergus’ head, as the door swings shut behind him. “Very fucking _liberal_ of you - very fucking -”

Fergus stalks back to the party and only realises how badly he’s shaking when he attempts to take another glass of Prosecco off the drinks table and nearly knocks a number of them flying. He secures one, downs it and picks up a second.

“Steady on, Fergus,” says a familiar, lugubrious voice behind him. “Anyone’d think you were drinking to forget how very badly the next five months are likely to go for you.”

“Oh, fuck off, Peter,” Fergus snaps.

“Well, I’ve stayed long enough to shake the right hands, anyway,” Mannion says, unruffled by Fergus’ ill-temper. “Time to go and talk the wife into letting me sleep in the marital bed, seeing as it’s Christmas.”

The next morning, Fergus will reflect grimly that he can’t remember the last time he got so determinedly drunk. Perhaps that awful night in Birmingham. Either way, he swigs his way through a further four Proseccos in quick succession, allows himself to be poured into a taxi by someone highly amused and possibly taking pictures on their phone - dear God, let it not have been Phil - and manages not to be sick until he crawls through his own front door and up the stairs to sprawl miserably on the bathroom floor. Adam has always said the walls are the colour of vomit; they regard him silently while he clutches the toilet bowl and berates himself for passing up the only opportunity he’s ever likely to see of getting his hands - and other parts of himself - on Adam’s no-doubt perfect cock. He’s a complete fucking idiot, and he’s never hated himself, or Adam, more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The latter part of this chapter from Adam's perspective was published in October as a stand-alone fic: [There Overnight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27191119).


	9. Chapter 9

Months ago, Fergus had been putting away the washing, when he’d realised some of Adam’s clothes had somehow ended up mixed up with his. He’d wracked his brains trying to work out how and why it might have happened, and the closest he could get was that the cleaner had been overzealous after Adam last slept in the spare room, maybe after the by-election results when they’d stayed up til the early hours, fuelled by coffee, and then Adam had crashed out on the spare bed still wearing most of his clothes. The following morning had been a rush to get Fergus to the _Today_ radio car, where he was supposed to be giving his response to the news that Lib Dem seats on local councils had been all-but wiped out in nineteen authorities, and Adam had pulled on a spare shirt from the collection that seemed to have migrated to the spare room wardrobe over the years, and said he’d come back for the rest of his things later.

Feeling unaccountably foolish and embarrassed, Fergus had folded the clean clothes - a shirt, a pair of jogging bottoms, and most embarrassingly, a pair of Adam’s Ted Baker boxer-briefs - and left them on the spare bed, wincing at the thought of Adam’s inevitable mockery, when he assumed Fergus had taken to doing his washing for him. Rather more foolish and embarrassing was the realisation, later, that one of Adam’s t-shirts had escaped his notice and ended up folded up with his own, and the fact that Fergus had decided, in the end, not to return it. It was an oversized, threadbare thing bearing the logo of the 2005 London Marathon upon it in peeling print. Had Adam used it to sleep in? Given his propensity for striding about in the mornings without a shirt on, Fergus had always assumed, somewhat guiltily, trying not to think about it too hard, that he didn’t bother with pyjamas.

All of which makes it excruciatingly horrifying the next morning when Fergus is slumped at the kitchen table, hungover and melancholy, wearing Adam’s t-shirt and his rattiest pair of pyjama bottoms, when he hears the front door slam over the hum of _Desert Island Discs_. Fergus has spent the last hour and a half ignoring Adam’s calls because he’d gambled that even Adam wouldn’t be brazen enough to swan in using his spare key, in the aftermath of his behaviour the night before.

“I’ve been calling you,” Adam says, stomping to a halt in the kitchen doorway with his hands on his hips.

Fergus is momentarily speechless. He rallies, only to mumble, “Haven’t looked at my phone,” despite itlying where he’d tossed it forty-five minutes ago, on a pile of adverts for local takeaways beside the fruit bowl.

“For fuck’s sake,” Adam says, shoving the phone across the table. Fergus picks it up and glares at the message alerts. How dare Adam trespass like this again. Fuck him, for always assuming Fergus doesn’t mind the way he’s always there with a hand on the small of Fergus’ back shepherding him into chairs and insinuating himself between Fergus and anyone else in the room, making everything, always, about him. Fuck him.

“Good of you to come and apologise,” he says, in the end. “Be great if you could just fuck off again, thanks.”

“Fuck off,” Adam retorts. “You look like shit. Did Phil have you doing bodyshots off Mannion’s sweaty tits?

“Yeah, well, so do you,” Fergus replies. Adam’s hands are still on his hips and, when Fergus glances at him, there’s a pinched, grey look about him, familiar from the few times he’s done things whose consequences genuinely frighten him."I fucking hate it when you get coked up, you always make shitty decisions."

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Course. That was the fucking reason. Come on, then; no doubt you’ve been rehearsing a little lecture about why it was all so fucking revolting -"

“It was completely out of fucking order,” Fergus says tightly, watching Adam scoff and roll his eyes. “No - fuck off, Adam - I mean it. You crossed a line, an inappropriate line, and you owe me a fucking apology.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here, alright? It’s not a big fucking deal -”

Fergus leaps to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. If this were an argument about anything else, anything that left him feeling less flayed open, he’d have been spitting expletives in Adam’s face, by now. “Will you stop fucking saying that?” 

Adam is staring at him, and Fergus can’t bear to watch his expression curl into the inevitable sneer. He turns to gaze out of the window. Trust Fergus not to be able to take a joke; trust Fergus not to be able to take whatever Adam had been offering him for what it was. Trust Fergus to get upset, and to let his embarrassing feelings come spilling out all over the pair of them.

There’s an unexpected pause, after which Adam says, “Alright, alright - I get it - I’m sorry.”

Fergus snorts. “No, you’re fucking not.”

“No, I am - seriously, I didn’t mean to fuck anything up.”

“Why the fuck did you do it, then? Why the fuck would you -“

“Because I wanted to,” Adam says, as though he’s being tortured for information. “I wanted to, and I thought it was mutual, but apparently I’m a twat and I got it fucking wrong, so can we just draw a line under it and - fucking forget the ‘don’t come in tomorrow’ bullshit?”

Fergus stares at him, having abandoned the safe, calming view of the garden. Adam looks as though he’s bracing himself for Fergus punching him in the face, after all. “Of course it’s fucking mutual,” he says, furiously, “you fucking bastard.”

This time, when Adam kisses him, Fergus is expecting it. He watches him stride across the kitchen like a man possessed and then shudder to a halt just outside Fergus’ grasp. He licks his lower lip while staring at Fergus’ mouth - Fergus wonders whether he knows he’s doing it - and then reaches for him, curling chilled fingers around Fergus’ waist, crowding him backwards against the sink. When the kiss comes, the shock of its gentleness makes him choke something miserable and embarrassing into the space between them, but Adam leans into him more intently and chases it with his tongue, and he forgets to be embarrassed. Adam kisses like he doesn’t want to cause any damage, and Fergus detests himself for folding beneath it immediately, weak-kneed and clutching at the edge of the sink for support.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, eventually, when Adam lets him go. Adam is breathing heavily, forehead resting against his, and Fergus is overwhelmingly glad he bothered to brush his teeth before trudging downstairs earlier to mope at the kitchen table.

“I can fuck off again,” Adam says hoarsely, his eyes searching Fergus’ face. “Seriously, if this isn’t -"

Fergus kisses him and abandons his grip on the sink to slide one hand around the back of Adam’s neck. “Six fucking months,” he hisses, between kisses. “After the election. I had a fucking - a fucking _plan -"_

“No you fucking didn’t.” Adam’s mouth ghosts over his cheek and begins to suck a bruise beneath his ear.

Fergus shudders against him. Adam isn’t wrong; of course he hasn’t had a plan, beyond spending the rest of his life vaguely lusting and resentful, greedily soaking up every bit of Adam’s spare time and attention, every weekly squash session and evening at the pub, and then watching him go back to his career and his inevitable wife, bitter and unfulfilled. Fortunately, he’s deprived of the opportunity to confess any of this by Adam shoving a hand through his hair and pushing a knee between his legs, leaving him moaning and shuddering against the firm swell of Adam’s thigh. He grabs a handful of Adam’s arse and hauls him closer and Adam groans, rolling into him until he’s practically perched on the edge of the sink, clinging on for dear life.

Adam shoves a hand between them and into Fergus’ pyjamas, and then neither of them seem to be capable of rational thought for a while. Adam pants in his ear and works him slowly, nudging himself into the hollow of Fergus’ hip.

“Fuck,” Fergus hisses, clutching at him. “Jesus Christ.”

Adam pulls back and looks at him, eyes dark and serious. “Bed, _now_ ,” he mutters.

Fergus does not need to be told twice. He nudges Adam out of the way and slips from his perch against the sink, flicking a glance in Adam’s direction as he goes, just in case he’s still, somehow, misjudging things, but Adam is right behind him, slipping a hand beneath Fergus’ t-shirt and hissing at him to get a fucking move on.

In the bedroom, Fergus lets himself be toppled into his unmade bed. He peels off his t-shirt, Adam’s hands already on his skin, chasing it off his shoulders, and then insists Adam do the same. Adam presses fervent kisses everywhere he can reach, slipping his hands beneath the waistband of Fergus’ awful pyjamas and peeling them from him, tossing them over his shoulder. Adam’s cock is bobbing eagerly between them and Adam is watching him, waiting to see, perhaps, where Fergus intends this to go.

“Ferg -” he says, in a tone Fergus can’t parse. The problem is, if they lose momentum, Fergus will be overwhelmed by the enormity and stupidity of what they’re doing. He charges ahead to avoid the possibility of Adam ruining things by attempting to have a conversation.

As blowjobs go, it isn’t one of Fergus’ best. Adam doesn’t seem to mind. Soon, he’s bucking against Fergus’ hands, head thrown back against the pillows. When Fergus glances up at him, he looks shell-shocked and gratifyingly less than sure of himself for once, as though Fergus has finally done something to surprise him. He’s close already, that much is obvious. The eye contact seems to be what finishes him off, because he chokes, “Fuck, I’m going to -"

Fergus pulls off and wraps a hand around him, vaguely wishing they’d used a condom, because Adam’s sexual history is chequered, and Fergus is usually careful about these things. Adam makes a broken, guttural noise and comes before Fergus can move out of the way.

“Fuck,” says Adam, unsteadily, panting, his eyes wide and hungry on Fergus’ face while his cock twitches against his stomach.

Fergus sits back, nearly toppling off the bed. There is come in his hair. “You - fucking _hell_ , Adam! You did that on fucking purpose! Is this some sort of fetish thing? You can’t fucking finish unless it’s on someone’s face? It’s fucking _polite_ to ask first!”

Adam’s chest is heaving. He lurches sideways and grabs something from the floor, flinging it in Fergus’ direction. “Yeah,” he gasps, “because I’m known for my manners.”

Fergus scowls at the t-shirt in his hands - Adam’s, as was - and wipes his face with it. Adam leans closer, plucks it from his grasp, and drops it over the side of the bed. His gaze makes a leisurely journey down the length of Fergus’ body. “Besides,” he says, reaching out to swipe his thumb over the head of Fergus’ cock. “I don’t see you complaining.”

Before Fergus can tell him what a fucking reprobate he is, Adam leans in to lick his top lip, where he’s been less than thorough in wiping himself clean, and then sucks Fergus’ tongue into his mouth, stymying his complaints. He bears him down into the pillows, licks his palm, and then wraps a hand around him again, while Fergus writhes and squirms against him, clutching helplessly at his shoulders. It doesn’t take long. He comes with Adam’s tongue in his mouth, riding out his orgasm against the soft plane of Adam’s stomach.

For a handful of long, quivering moments, Adam is a hot, heavy weight upon him, his breath loud in Fergus’ ear. It’s not as though he minds. He closes his eyes and tries to control his breathing. His heart is hammering; Adam must be able to feel it through his ribs, through his skin.

With a groan, Adam heaves himself onto his back, one hand flung over his eyes like he’s sprawled on a fucking fainting couch. Fergus takes the opportunity to escape and stumble towards the bathroom.

He splashes cold water on his face and dries it on a towel. In the mirror, his face is blotchy and flushed and wearing an expression of pathetic gratitude. _Get a fucking hold of yourself._

He flings the towel at Adam on his way back into the bedroom and Adam wipes his stomach before dropping it onto the floor to join the unfortunate t-shirt. It’s this, more than anything else, that quells the incipient frantic feeling clawing its way up Fergus’ throat. In his limited experience of one night stands, one of them ought to have been considering making an awkward exit by now, but Adam doesn’t appear to have any intention of leaping to his feet and throwing on his clothes. Fergus flings himself down beside him and waits to see what happens next.

From the floor, muffled beneath the pile of clothes and the ill-used towel, Adam’s phone chirrups. He leans over the side of the bed to reach for it, and Fergus watches the lines of his shoulders shift and stretch as he does. He wants to press his face against them, to mouth at the constellation of moles scattered there. Adam retrieves the phone and checks his messages, and Fergus keeps his hands and mouth to himself.

“Anything important?”

“Mum, on my case about Christmas,” Adam mutters, rolling his eyes. “Hassling me - not very fucking subtly - to bring a plus one.”

“Least your mum still asks about you taking someone; mine long-since gave up hope. No fucking chance, by the way."

Adam glances at him and grins. “As if you were invited. I’m going down on the 24th, so we can get the social enterprise thing out of the way first, send it off to Mannion with a cheery festive wave and a fuck-you-very-much for his trouble.”

Fergus leans over and kisses him. He’s so pleased when Adam doesn’t rebuff him that he does it a second time, pulling Adam towards him with one hand hot and sweaty on the side of his face. “Stay until Monday?” he asks, between kisses. “Everyone's on annual leave, no one’ll see us going in together.”

Adam hums his agreement against Fergus’ lips. “Yeah, fine.”

They kiss lazily for a while, until the arm with which Fergus is propping himself up begins to go numb, at which point he murmurs regretfully about needing a shower.

“Meant to tell you,” says Adam, following him intothe bathroom. “Kishor at HQ says he knows why Angela’s got the wind up her about Michael; apparently she’s been sounding people out about shafting him after the election and he’s lumbered into action and shipped her off to the gulag.”

Fergus cackles, reaching over to switch on the water. “Scotland?”

“Worse,” Adam says, coming up behind him to crowd him up against the cold tiles. “Brussels.”

“Fucking perfect,” Fergus says. He smirks at Adam over his shoulder. “How d’you feel about blowing me in the shower?”

On Monday morning, DoSAC is deserted; the awkward Christmas holiday means everyone has indeed taken leave and gone home a day early, and the department floor is unnaturally, unnervingly silent.

“This is fucking stupid,” Fergus mutters, regardless, eyeing his closed office door with some concern, over Adam’s shoulder.

It was Adam who, having completed a desultory hour’s work on the policy briefing and sent it off to Mannion and Phil, startled Fergus by closing the floor-to-ceiling blinds and locking the office door behind him.

“It’s fine, no one’s in,” Adam says, biting the skin beneath his ear. “Are you seriously saying you don’t want to fuck me on your desk while we’ve got the chance?”

“Fucking hell.” Fergus grabs a handful of his shirt. “Get a move on, then.”

In the end, they don’t make it to the desk. Instead, Adam crowds him up against the wall, in the corner by the filing cabinet, as though that would hide what they’re up to from anyone who broke down the door to discover them. He makes quick work of their trousers and underwear and gets his hand around them both, letting Fergus shudder against him, swallowing his helpless noises with long, open-mouthed kisses. Fergus feels Adam moan around his tongue when he comes, and follows him, rutting desperately into Adam’s slick fist.

“Are you coming back to mine?” Fergus asks, when he’s sufficiently recovered.

Adam is still bracketing him against the wall, nudging kisses into the side of his neck. “Can’t,” he murmurs. “I’ve got to go back to mine at some point. It’s been three days; I’ve got to pack.”

Fergus closes his eyes. “Fuck packing. Fuck Christmas. Come over to mine and we’ll get pissed and spend the whole day in bed.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Adam says. He sounds genuinely regretful. Briefly, Fergus allows himself to imagine it: locking themselves in the house with the contents of the Sainsbury’s Local down the road and a couple of bottles of champagne and spending Christmas Day warm and sticky under the covers. He’d do it. Mum wouldn’t even know whether he was there or not, or whether it was Christmas Day or Boxing Day or sodding Easter Sunday.

He shrugs. “I’ll be back from Mum’s on Boxing Day. What are you doing for New Year?”

Adam smirks, tugging Fergus closer with a hand on his hip. “You?”

Fergus rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning. It’s so easy; how can it possibly be this easy between them? For once, he isn’t worried about fucking things up. It’s just him and Adam, except now there’s a lot more sex involved.

They’re kissing again and Fergus gets his hands in Adam’s hair, tugs on it just to hear Adam groan into his mouth again.

“We need to go,” Adam murmurs, eventually.

“Fucking hell, alright.”

They put themselves to rights with sideways, embarrassed glances, grabbing tissues from the box on top of the filing cabinet and tucking shirts back into trousers. Adam’s hair looks exactly like he’s just been fucked in a stationery cupboard, and Fergus wants to step into his space again and rearrange it with his fingers, but he knows where that proprietary urge comes from so he smothers it, instead raising an eyebrow and gesturing towards Adam’s head. “Might want to look in a mirror.”

“Fuck’s sake, Ferg,” Adam says, ducking to glance at his reflection in the framed photograph of Fergus shaking hands outside the Commons with a bemused Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s soft and said through a smile and Fergus looks away hastily, busying himself with making sure all the tissues have ended up in the bin.

They climb into the same taxi out of habit, even though it makes Adam’s journey twice as long as it needs to be. Halfway across Vauxhall Bridge, while Adam is peering fractiously at his phone, Fergus realises their hands are almost touching on the seat between them. All it would need would be for Fergus to move his little finger a centimetre in Adam’s direction. But then they’d be holding hands in the back of a taxi, and Fergus would have to bail out and throw himself into the river. It doesn’t stop him thinking about doing it; about Adam somehow not calling him a fucking idiot, smiling sideways at him before going back to his phone, letting Fergus insinuate his little finger beneath his own, and leaving it there.

He does no such thing, because he’s in enough trouble as it is. Instead, he turns his attention to the view out of the window, watching the lights on Vauxhall High Street speed past, tiny illuminated Christmas trees suspended at jaunty angles from the frontages of shops in a mawkish honour guard.

The cab pulls up alongside the row of parked cars outside Fergus’ house and he checks, out of habit, that the bins are still where they’re supposed to be. When he unbuckles his seatbelt, he’s surprised to find Adam’s hand grabbing his, squeezing it briefly. He glances up and Adam is looking at him, a lopsided smile making him look far more attractive than he has any right to be, in the thin, yellow glare of a taxi’s interior light.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, quietly. “Text me, yeah?”

Fergus squeezes back, feeling giddy and foolish. He flashes a glance at the cabbie, but he’s busy fiddling with the meter. He wishes he could kiss Adam goodbye; Adam looks like he possibly wishes it, too.

“I will,” he says, then drags himself out of the car before he can do anything incriminating in front of a witness.

He slams the car door and hurries inside before he can watch it trundle away towards the main road.

Christmas Day is an ordeal. The home is the nicest one Fergus had been able to find near Royston; he ought to have moved her to London, where it would have been easier to visit, but he hadn’t liked to think of uprooting her. There’d seemed something callous about it, which is ridiculous, given how little awareness of her surroundings she’s displayed on Fergus’ visits since confining her there.

The day matron on Christmas morning introduces herself and smiles at Fergus indulgently, as though she thinks there’s something noble about his coming to spend his Christmas Day there. He always scans the visitor’s book, but none of his mum’s friends have been to see her lately. He wonders how many of the other residents will be receiving visits today. He thinks about all the selfish bastards who aren’t going to be coming in to spend Christmas Day with their elderly relatives; if he’d tried harder to persuade Adam to spend Christmas in bed with him, he’d have been one of them.

There’s always something oppressive about the home, with its subdued lighting and its sweltering central heating. As Fergus makes his way towards the day room it closes in on him, collaborating with the sickly, synthetic smell of antibacterial spray over not-quite-exorcised urine to leave him sweating and nauseated.

At first he thinks she recognises him. She perks up when he appears, and he sits next to her on one of the over-stuffed chairs, putting the bag containing her Christmas presents at his feet.

“Hello, Mum,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

The drive back to London on a deserted motorway is, possibly, worse than the awful afternoon he’s spent unwrapping Mum’s presents for her and trying to correct her when she asks him what he’s studying at university. They’ve never been a family for hugs and kisses, and he often wonders whether it would be easier if he could bridge the divide between them by laying a hand on her arm or kissing her thin, white hair. It would probably upset her; fear of upsetting her is what paralyses Fergus every time he visits and sees him making an escape as soon as he feels is seemly. She hadn’t looked at her presents - a new hair brush and mirror, a potted poinsettia that will have withered by the next time he visits, and a box of her favourite York Fruits - so he’d left them in her room and asked one of the carers if someone could water the poinsettia, just to give it a fighting chance.

He pulls into a space outside the house and suffers an immense wave of loneliness at the sight of the row of drawn curtains behind which other people are taking part in the sort of family ritual he and his parents never really went in for, even when they were both alive. When he unlocks the front door, the usual smell of sandalwood falls on the melancholy side of familiar.

He’s ensconced on the sofa with an enormous glass of wine and a family-sized bag of Kettle Chips, watching the late-night repeat of the festive episode of _QI_ , when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He fishes it out and opens a message from Adam. He is entirely unprepared for the high-definition photograph of an erect cock contained therein.

 _Merry Christmas,_ the associated message reads. Another arrives in quick succession: _For the record, Im pissed and lobnley and bored of cnversation w/my fucking family._

_Are you sexting me from your mum’s spare room?_

_Wd you rather me be having a wank underneath the Xmas tree?_

_I’d rather you were here,_ Fergus replies without thinking.

 _Why?_ Adam replies and then, while Fergus is starting to panic because he’s ruined Adam’s attempt to have sex with him via text message with drunken sentimentality, _What wd you do, if I wre?_

Fergus stares, then knocks back a large mouthful of wine and replaces his glass on the coffee table. He licks the salt and grease off his fingers. It appears that this is actually happening. _Can I ring you?_

_Better not, Katie’s still up. I’ve shown you mine, tho - could at least show me yours._

_This is the kind of thing that ends up with one or both of us sacked and pictures of my cock all over the internet._

_Coward._

_Fuck off,_ Fergus replies, then puts down his phone so he can strip off his jeans.


	10. Chapter 10

**London, 2015**

New Year’s Eve is Fergus’ least favourite time of year. His experiences of New Year’s Eves past can be categorised as: too young to enjoy it, sitting on the stairs in his parents’ house, watching their friends sing Auld Lang Syne; old enough that he ought to have enjoyed it, but typically at a party with people he didn’t like, listening to music he didn’t appreciate, snogging girls he wasn’t in any way attracted to just to maintain a flimsy pretence; and past it and lonely, slumped on the sofa with a bottle of wine enduring _Hootnenanny_ for a couple of hours, then declaring surrender and going to bed without seeing midnight.

All of this means that 2015 is shaping up to be a banner year in the annals of Fergus’ existence, because, when the fireworks start popping and bursting in the distance and there’s a cheer from the garden of a house down the road, he’s in bed, and for once he’s not alone. Instead, there’s an empty bottle of M&S champagne on the bedside table and Adam is fucking him with pissed enthusiasm, whispering disjointed filth into the close, sticky air between them. Fergus gazes up at him, dazzled and overwhelmed, and comes without Adam having to touch him. Adam laughs, apparently delighted, then nearly bends him in half in his determination to come with Fergus’ tongue in his mouth. Afterwards, he presses his face into Fergus’ neck and swears as he withdraws, biting the words into Fergus’ damp, sticky skin.

Work resumes on the 5th of January. The advent of the new year means the election looming ever closer, and on this particularly Monday morning, Fergus finds himself storming around the house, closing cupboards with unnecessary force and flinging the tube of toothpaste across the bathroom on discovering it to be empty, before taking himself to task and pausing to consider quite why he’s so unnerved to be returning to DoSAC this year, when it’s the fourth Christmas recess he’s endured as Minister.

He knows the answer, of course. He woke up, this morning, alone. Adam had stayed over on Saturday night and then made regretful noises yesterday morning before Fergus was even properly awake, disappearing just after dawn with a muttered excuse about needing to go for a run and get some actual work done. Today, Fergus is going to have to spend nine hours in his company in full view of Terri, Robyn and Phil, without giving anything away. If there even is anything to give away; perhaps Sunday morning was Adam’s way of signalling that it had been fun while it lasted. Fergus thinks glumly about joking that his penis should be for life, not just for Christmas, in an attempt to get Adam to change his mind. He barks his knee against the meter cupboard on his way out of the front door and spends the Tube journey to Westminster glowering at anyone who comes close enough to earn his wrath, sending a timid student scurrying to the other end of the carriage to avoid him.

DoSAC is subdued and grey when he walks out of the lift, all of Terri’s Christmas decorations taken down and consigned to the back of the stationery cupboard for another year and everyone creeping about as though still hungover. He bypasses Mannion’s office without checking to see whether he or Phil are already in and takes refuge behind his desk, burying himself in a comforting, productive half hour of checking and responding to emails.

“Do you know how to sew?” Adam demands, when he pushes the office door open with his shoulder and strides over to deposit a large takeaway coffee on Fergus’ desk, some time later.

Fergus stares at him. “What?”

“Do you know how to fucking sew?” Adam starts peeling off his scarf, draping it over the coat stand in the corner. “The Magna Carta embroidery people have been on at me again. They want you down there this afternoon.”

So anxious is he already, that Fergus foregoes the opportunity to ask what the fuck Magna Carta has to do with decorative needlework. “Can’t Peter do it?”

“Yeah, Shami Chakrabarti, a load of fucking reformed convicts, and the closest thing the Tories have to an actual Victorian pornographer - of course Peter can’t fucking do it. It’s going to have to be us.”

Fergus watches Adam stalk over to the sofa by the meeting table, open up his laptop and take a swig from his coffee cup. He glares at the screen while he logs in, and then continues to glare at it while he mutters about the gormlessness of the person he spoke to at the artist’s agency, trying to arrange a time for Fergus to travel over to Marylebone. He must realise that Fergus is unusually subdued, because he glances up and catches his eye.

Watching his expression soften, shifting into something private and understanding, is enough to induce vertigo. The corner of his mouth lifts and his eyes are warm, and then he’s smiling at Fergus across the office, nothing more than a knowing, intimate smirk, but enough to send Fergus hot from the base of his spine to the roots of his hair. The relief is sudden and overwhelming. He sincerely hopes he hasn’t gone red, but he suspects it’s a lost cause. He stares helplessly while Adam sits there and fucking smiles at him, and then Adam goes back to his emails, and Fergus is left to gulp down his too-hot coffee and pretend he isn’t quietly working through the preliminary stages of a nervous breakdown.

“The studio’s off Manchester Street,” Adam says. “We’ll head over after the briefing.”

“Cool,” Fergus replies, which is a word he hasn’t deliberately uttered since at least 1998.

Later, when Adam returns from the Cabinet Office bearing a BLT from the nice cafe around the corner and a bag of the posh crisps he only lets Fergus indulge in on special occasions, Fergus shoots panicked glances at Terri through his office window. She has a nose for gossip to rival a bloodhound; she’ll see Fergus eating his posh crisps, and she’ll be straight on the phone to Philippa at the FCO and the news about he and Adam will spread like wildfire.

“Calm down,” Adam says mildly, standing in front of his desk. “I’ve been bringing you your lunch for four years; no one’s going to intuit anything.”

“You got me the nice crisps,” Fergus says, while it sinks in that Adam has indeed been bringing him his lunch for that long, ever since Fergus got elected. Even before that, during the campaign, he’d had a knack of shoving a sausage roll into Fergus’ hand before he even had chance to register that he was tired and hungry and sick of wandering the streets of Norwich trying to pretend to give a shit about public transport.

“Be nice to the Magna Carta people and I’ll blow you, too,” Adam says, smirking. “You free this evening?”

Of course Fergus is free. The last time he went anywhere of an evening that wasn’t a tedious function related to his job, he’d been sprawled at Adam’s eating a takeaway, half-heartedly watching the UEFA Cup Final.

“Good,” is all Adam says, and then he’s answering his phone and wandering off to bollock Terri about a press release.

All of which explains why Fergus finds himself later that afternoon at an artist’s studio near Marylebone station, in a room busy with noise and activity, being shown how to sew by a prisoner on day release from Wormwood Scrubs.

“It’s easy, just very repetitive,” says the artist, a woman with a wide smile and a very outré pair of glasses hanging around her neck. She’d introduced herself by shaking Fergus’ hand and telling him they’d already had Mary Drake and Dan Miller in to stitch the phrases ‘arbitrary authority’ and ‘civil liberties’ respectively, at which point Fergus had become convinced the whole endeavour was someone's idea of a bad joke, but it had been much too late to make his escape. “Just let us set up your section, and you’ll be able to make a start.”

“Hardly the fucking Bayeux Tapestry, is it,” he mutters to Adam, while assistants scurry about positioning the fabric over a work bench and the photographer sets up a light to illuminate it. "Why am I sewing the fucking Wikipedia page for Magna Carta? Who did Jimmy Wales have to wank off to swing this amount of free PR?" 

Adam pointedly ignores him and the artist beckons, summoning him to sit down. DoSAC has been asked to embroider ‘social contract’, which Fergus is sure is a dig, but he's smarting from Adam's refusal to let him kick up a fuss and ask to do ‘ _Rights of Man_ ’ instead.

“We’ll get a couple of shots of you stitching, first,” says the artist. “I’ll come back when you’ve nearly finished.”

It transpires that sewing isn’t very difficult, but that Fergus is hopelessly clumsy and keeps accidentally unthreading the needle. It would have been far better, he reflects, having descended into a temper and refused his assigned prisoner’s offer of help, if Mannion had been the one to do this, because he’d probably have been charming and self-effacing and bribed one of the prisoners into doing the work for him.

“Play nice, remember,” Adam murmurs, when he comes to peer over Fergus’ shoulder at his progress. 

“I feel like a complete twat. This is going to be my sodding legacy: the MP who bled to death, having stabbed himself with an embroidery needle. Why the fuck are we doing this?”

“Because someone had to, and I’d rather you get the nice, fluffy publicity than Peter.”

“This fucking election can just get fucked,” Fergus says, but he’s prevented from launching into his usual tirade by the return of the photographer.

On the bright side, Adam keeps his promise. He calls them a cab, asks it to make a detour past Sainsbury's for ready meals and beer, and invites himself inside when it pulls up outside Fergus' front door. 

_All the President’s Men_ is on BBC Two and Fergus has always found Adam’s ability to quote it, line for line, deeply amusing. He says, while shovelling spaghetti carbonara into his mouth, watching Bob Woodward type his warning about their lives being in danger to the sound of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Trumpets, “Do you think they were fucking?”

Adam glances at him. “Redford and Hoffman?”

“No, you twat. Woodward and Bernstein.”

“Is this your way of telling me you want to role play? Want me to make the obligatory reference to Deep Throat before I go down on you?”

“Fuck off, I was only wondering.”

Adam eyes him slyly, anyway, and reaches a hand between them to undo Fergus’ belt.

Five minutes later, with their dinner going cold on the coffee table, Fergus' head is thrown back against the sofa cushions and his trousers are shoved halfway down his thighs. He's sure he must look absolutely ridiculous, but he’s too busy trying not to come the second Adam gets his mouth on him to care.

Carole gives them the bad news about Leticia Campbell on a rainy Wednesday morning in February. Adam walks into the office uncharacteristically grim-faced at seven-thirty and glances at Fergus over the top of his BlackBerry with a frown.

“Have you seen your emails?”

Fergus has not seen his emails. He has been, for the last fifteen minutes, attempting to decide whether or not to attend the Home Office roundtable on citizenship testing, weighing up the possibility of steering policy in a direction useful to the Liberal contingent at DoSAC against the incalculable horror of an hour and a half in Mary Drake’s company. Since he made a formal approach on the subject of the landing cards just before Christmas, she’s been treating him as one step removed from an enemy agent who ought to be taken out and shot.

“It’s Mrs Campbell,” Adam says, throwing himself into a chair. “She’s had a stroke.”

“What? Fucking hell.”

On her last visit to the constituency office, Mrs Campbell had brought with her a rather magnificent rum and coconut cake. She’d stressed that it was for Carole and Stephen, the hapless caseworker, but nonetheless insisted Fergus take a piece back to London with him wrapped in foil. Security protocol dictates that Fergus avoid consuming gifts from constituents, but it had been a very good cake. He and Adam had had it with coffee the following morning, while Phil whinged that constituents never made he and Mannion cake and Adam offered to bake him an extra big one laced with strychnine for his birthday.

The following Saturday, at the Assembly Rooms, Carole updates them on Mrs Campbell’s condition and intimates that she might appreciate a visit, while Fergus is in town, to reassure her that being confined to a hospital bed doesn’t mean that her immigration case has slipped off anyone’s radar. Fergus has spent a number of months avoiding visits to Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital on the grounds that it might lead to him being challenged over the impact of austerity measures, but if there were one constituent he’d be willing to break his embargo for, it might just be Mrs Campbell.

“Oh, just ring up and tell them we’re not there for a photo op,” he mutters to Adam, when Carole has gone to finalise the list of the morning’s appointments. “Couldn’t hurt to set foot in the place sooner rather than later. Don’t want to be accused of not giving a shit about frontline services, do I?”

They’d stayed at a hotel the night before, because of the Friday constituency meeting. Adam had knocked on Fergus’ door just before midnight and they’d had quiet, furtive sex on Fergus’ bed and then, when it became clear that they were incapable of preventing the creaking springs and rhythmic knocking of the headboard from giving them away, on the floor at the foot of it. Adam had come with Fergus’ discarded t-shirt bundled in front of his face to muffle the noises he seemed incapable of containing and Fergus had stared up at him, transfixed, hands on Adam’s thighs as they tensed and shuddered on either side of him.

Adam is prevented from replying about a visit to the hospital by the arrival of a tall, harried woman in her mid-forties, who strides into the hall, sets eyes on Fergus, and comes marching towards him as though she intends to challenge him to a boxing match.

“Mr Williams,” she says, extending a hand, which Fergus shakes with confused trepidation. “I’m Jennifer, Leticia Campbell’s daughter. I’ve been speaking to Carole for the last few days about my mother.”

“Oh, Christ,” says Fergus, and then, when Adam prods him sharply in the back, “Of course. Hello, good to meet you. A shame it’s under these circumstances.”

Jennifer glances at Adam uncertainly. “I’ve come to talk about her case, seeing as nothing’s been done about the documentation.”

“Would you like a seat?” Adam asks, offering her a plastic chair.

Jennifer sits, sets her bag on her knee and draws out of it a sheaf of photocopied and annotated correspondence. Fergus catches sight of letters bearing the Home Office letterheads of three successive Ministers for Immigration.

“May I start, first of all, by saying how sorry we are to hear about what’s happened to your mum -”

“No,” says Jennifer, looking him straight in the eye.

“I’m sorry?”

“No, you may not. It’s you people who’ve put her where she is now. It’s been five years - five _years_ \- that you’re supposed to have been deciding whether she can stay or not, and I’ve been saying it’d kill her, in the end.”

“Ms Campbell -“

“It's Mrs Ledwick.”

“Mrs Ledwick, I’m sure you’re very frustrated with the lack of progress in your mother’s case -”

“My mother came to Britain as a little girl, Mr Williams,” Jennifer says. “She went to school here: primary school, secondary school. She got married in St Peter’s church. She’s worked, she’s paid her taxes, and now she’s being told she doesn’t belong here, like she’s some kind of criminal, like she snuck in when no one was looking. She was _invited_ here. You sit there and say you’re sorry she’s wound up in hospital - well, let me ask you what you’ve been doing to help her? As far as I can see, she’s had no real help from anybody.”

“Jennifer,” says Carole, emerging from the communal kitchen. “I’m so sorry about your mum. Can I get you a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you, Carole. I’m not here for long, just to give the minister this: came on Monday, 'Notice of Removal', saying my mother has no right to remain in the UK. She got up on Monday morning and opened the post, then keeled over three hours later.”

“Carole,” Fergus says, making meaningful, vaguely accusatory eyes at her, “did we know about the removal notice?”

“Stephen was notified yesterday morning,” she says, apologetically. “We’ve passed it to the solicitor.”

“Right. Excellent. May I?” he asks, indicating the folder of correspondence.

Jennifer hands it over and Fergus extracts the uppermost letter, dated eight days previously. It informs Mrs Campbell that she will not be removed from the UK before the sixth of April, but that after that time she may be removed without further notice, at any point within the following three months. Fergus stares at it, and at the facsimile signature of the Secretary of State.

“Can I ask how your mum’s getting on?” he ventures.

Jennifer’s frown deepens. “She’s having trouble with movement, and her speech isn’t good. They’re saying she’ll need physiotherapy. Seventy five next month, and they’re talking about her doing exercises to learn how to walk again.”

“Is she likely to need ongoing care?”

“She won’t need to worry about that. I’ll be looking after her; I’ve moved back to Norwich.”

“Of course,” says Fergus. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

Adam is hovering by the upright piano, frowning at Fergus’ approach. “ECHR appeal?” he mutters, as Fergus thrusts the removal notice into his hands. He takes a scornful look at it and hands it back. “They can’t throw her out if she’s bed-bound, for Christ’s sake.”

“What d’you reckon the state of stroke rehabilitation treatment in Trinidad must be like? Can you get on to the lawyer, make sure they’re already pursuing it?”

Adam turns to Carole to request the contact details of the law firm working _pro bono_ on Mrs Campbell’s case, and Fergus returns to his seat at the trestle table. Jennifer is eyeing him with suspicion as he returns the removal notice to the top of the pile of documents.

“There are grounds on which you can appeal the removal notice,” he tells her. “I’m sure Stephen - that’s your mum’s caseworker - I’m sure he’s already looking into it with the help of her solicitor, but I’ve asked Adam to chase it up and make sure those wheels are already in motion.”

“I’m aware of the name of my mother’s caseworker.”

“Of course, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

Jennifer leans forward, the bundle of letters clutched tightly on her knee as though she’s resisting the urge to fling it at him. “Unlike my mother, I’m not an elderly lady who left school at fifteen and still puts on her Sunday best every time she goes to the doctors, Mr Williams. If this is how you’ve been treating her, patting her on the hand and fobbing her off with condescension and cups of tea, I’m not surprised it’s taken so long for anyone to do anything useful on her behalf.”

Fergus is aware he’s probably wearing the expression Adam likes to call ‘Fergus Williams is affronted by the proles’. “Right. Well, I can see the Home Office has made a grave mistake in underestimating what it’s up against.”

Jennifer studies him silently for a moment. “I sincerely hope that wasn’t your attempt at sarcasm, Mr Williams, because I’ve already spoken to someone at the _Evening News_ , and I’ve got an interview with the _Eastern Daily Press_ at three o’clock this afternoon.”

Somewhere in the Norfolk and Norwich, Mrs Campbell is lying in a hospital bed unable to walk. Fergus remembers visiting his mum in Royston Hospital after her fall. The ward had been too hot and she’d been scared of the nurses because she hadn’t recognised any of them after the shift had changed, and she’d cried when he’d had to hold a glass of orange squash with a straw in it for her so she could have a drink.

“Mrs Ledwick,” he says, in the end. “I promise you, I do understand.”

Cal Richards, were he here, would be standing behind Jennifer making murderous eyes at Fergus for considering anything less than towing the government line on immigration policy. The thing is, Fergus is sick and fucking tired of holding elected office, if he can't even be of help to Mrs Campbell, who for some time has been the only person other than Adam and Carole to speak to him as though he’s worthy of even a semblance of respect, and sends him back to London with foil-wrapped parcels of coconut cake, and is a better, more fundamentally decent human being than anyone Fergus comes into contact with in the rest of his miserable, day-to-day existence.

Adam returns, scowling at his BlackBerry. “The solicitor’s already looking into an appeal,” he reports.

Jennifer Ledwick departs, ten minutes later, in no way mollified, but possibly slightly less convinced of Fergus’ utter incompetence. He watches her go and wonders what Mary Drake will do about Monday’s story in the _Eastern Daily Press_ after all her efforts to keep the cat in the bag about the disposal of the landing cards.

Adam sits down heavily to drink his cup of tea and Fergus glances at him furtively, making a number of decisions in the time it takes for Adam to dunk and consume a chocolate digestive.

“Adam,” he says. “Angela Heaney’s still at the _Mirror_ , isn’t she?”

By the time the train pulls into Liverpool Street, Fergus is fairly sure he’s too exhausted to think about having sex - even mind-blowing sex during which Adam comes while gasping Fergus’ name into a balled-up t-shirt - for at least a month.

“Are you coming in?” he asks, nonetheless, when the taxi pulls up alongside the kerb outside his house.

Something troubles Adam’s expression for a second, but then he seems to make peace with it and nods wearily. “Might as well.”

Fergus slings his overnight bag into the corner of the kitchen beside the washing machine and goes to put the kettle on, and Adam mutters about needing a cigarette, ducking out of the back door and letting in a front of cold, damp February air. When Fergus takes his tea out to him, he’s sitting in the small patch of weak sunlight that’s illuminating one of the rickety garden chairs, flicking ash into an empty flowerpot. With his other hand he’s scratching the ears of an enormous, elderly black cat, which is winding around his ankles and opening its mouth with a series of noises like the flexing of a rusty hinge. Adam glances up at him as he deposits a mug on the peeling table and his expression dares Fergus to laugh.

“Think he’s next door’s,” Fergus says, cradling his tea in both hands to warm his fingers. “They call him Arthur.”

Adam’s lips twitch minutely and he tips his head back against the brickwork, blowing out a steady stream of smoke.Fergus watches him, entranced.

Sometimes, Fergus is overwhelmed by it all: the way Adam’s lips part around a cigarette, the way Adam sometimes catches him looking and smirks, as though he likes that Fergus looks. He seems to throw himself into their encounters with an abandon Fergus finds a little frightening, and sometimes he has to school himself not to flinch away from the intensity of it all. Adam falls apart with Fergus fucking him like it’s the end of the world, every single time. It’s like he expects Fergus to surrender something of himself to it and, frankly, he isn’t sure that he can. Sometimes he wonders whether Adam wants him to come out; whether Adam would come out, too, if he asked him. The idea of it, of taking this lunatic, bewildering thing and making it public, makes Fergus’ heart beat a rapid, anxious tattoo behind his ribs.

Eventually, Adam finishes his cigarette, Fergus finishes his tea, and they go back inside. Then Adam takes the mug from his cold fingers, places it on the kitchen table, and pushes him, gently, up against the washing machine. Fergus’ fingers are tight on the edge of the worktop to stop himself from shoving them through Adam’s hair, until Adam grabs one of his hands and places it there. Afterwards, he hauls Adam to his feet and gets the same hand down the front of his jeans. Adam kisses him, pushing the taste of smoke and Fergus’ own orgasm onto his tongue.

The following week, at Fergus’ insistence, Adam collates another round of responses from the constituency phone canvassing operation Carole has been overseeing in their absence. The results speak for themselves, which is to say that they leave Fergus staring glumly into the depths of his coffee and wondering whether he ought to be making a preemptive call to Dignitas.

“We need to talk about framing,” Adam says, eventually, after ten minutes of the pair of them squinting at the graphs from different angles, as though a third axis might magically appear and reveal that Fergus is not, after all, comprehensively fucked.

Fergus is a veteran of framing. He’s sat through a three hour training session with nPower’s stateside PR consultants and once endured Stewart’s incomprehensible thoughts on re-shaping the narrative on fiscal conservatism. He eyes Adam sceptically. “Do we?”

Adam holds his gaze for a moment and then submits. “No, alright, we don’t need to talk about fucking framing, I was trying to find a diplomatic way to talk about the actual problem.”

“Which is…?”

“Which is that we’re going to lose this election by a fucking landslide.”

“Don’t fucking sugar coat it, will you?”

“Well, I didn’t expect you to want me to start mollycoddling you now.”

“Of course I fucking don’t,” Fergus snaps. He glances at Adam to find him looking unusually grim and sighs inwardly. “So, this is you resigning, then, is it?”

Adam frowns. “What?”

Fergus shrugs. “I don’t blame you. There’s still a chance for you to jump off the sinking ship and scurry on to one that’s only slightly listing, I suppose.”

“Fuck off, Ferg. Don’t be a twat. I’m talking about managing the situation so we don’t come out of it completely unemployable.”

“Oh. Is it going to be that bad?”

“Of course it is. We lost this fucking election five years ago when Michael and JB dry-humped each other in the Rose Garden. You could have been the best constituency MP Norwich South’s ever had, and the students would still have fucking hated you.” It goes without saying that Fergus has fallen far short of this achievement, in any case.

“So, what are you saying? Throw in the towel and go cap in hand to the think tanks, hope someone takes me in? What the fuck are you going to do?”

“Do you want to?”

“What?”

“Throw in the towel?”

Fergus shoves an exasperated hand through his hair. “No, of course I don’t want to throw in the fucking towel! We’ve been a fucking good team. I could quite happily set fire to every one of those fuckers,” he says, flailing an arm in the direction of the DoSAC civil servants through the floor-to-ceiling windows, “but I refuse to go back to fucking - fucking _comms_ for nPower, again. Fucking hell, Adam -”

“Alright,” says Adam, quietly, in the voice he uses when he’s trying to quell one of Fergus’ tantrums. “Alright, I know. It’s the fucking same for me, isn’t it.”

Is it? Fergus wants to demand. Is it the same for you? Adam could swan into Opposition HQ tomorrow and find some up-and-coming Shad Cab-er in need of a guiding hand. “Well,” he says, in the end, “you haven’t been the acceptable face of leaking, sexism and knee-jerk racism for the last five years, have you?”

“Look,” says Adam. “There’s a clean way out of this, for both of us.”

“Really? Enlighten me. How exactly do we come out of this well? Fucking hell.”

Adam gets to his feet and casts a glance through the window at the drones going about their departmental business, then moves subtly into Fergus’ space, maintaining sufficient distance for plausible deniability, should anyone happen to look their way. He ducks his head slightly to force Fergus to meet his eyes, as though Fergus were a sulking child; Fergus has always hated it when he does this.

“We will,” he says, holding Fergus’ reluctant gaze. Fergus wishes he’d put his hands on him, but they’re in full view, and Adam doesn’t touch him, anymore, not when they’re in the office. “But not if you start being a fucking headcase about it, alright?”

“Fuck off.”

“Shit,” Adam says, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got to go. This fucking strategy thing.”

“What time will you be back?”

“Six? Don’t wait, though.”

Fergus shrugs. For a second, he wonders whether Adam is about to kiss him goodbye, feeling like a fifties housewife watching him grab his coat and scarf and head for the door. He doesn’t, and Fergus leaves the graphs on the coffee table, returning to his desk to stare at the draft of his speech for the carers’ lunch, in the hope that it makes throwing himself out of the window seem less appealing.

By seven o’clock, Adam has still not reappeared in DoSAC, and Fergus has extracted a cigarette from the packet Adam keeps in the upper drawer of his desk. It’s only been two months since he took it up again, claiming it’s a stress-management technique until the election’s over, but he’s sequestered emergency packets of fags all over the place.

Fergus is lurking outside the fire escape overlooking the bins, collar turned up against the weather, when his phone rings.

“Have you gone home?” Adam asks, without preamble.

“No, still here.”

“I’ve just got back, where are you?”

“Fire escape.”

“Alright, hang on.”

Five minutes later, Adam emerges into the gloom, looking tight around the eyes, the way he always seems to when he returns from one of the Comms Office briefings, these days. Fergus flicks the remainder of the cigarette to the floor and stubs it out under his shoe.

“How was it?”

“Pointless,” Adam says shortly, which Fergus has learned is code for his having reached the limit of wanting to talk about it. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Fergus says, and then, when Adam raises an eyebrow at him, “Well, it’s just, it’s my birthday, isn’t it.”

“Bollocks,” says Adam. “Shitting hell, Ferg. I forgot.”

“Fuck off, it’s not a big deal, is it. I imagine my forty-second year will pass in much the same vein as the forty-first did, except this year I get to face the ritual humiliation of losing a general election.”

“Many happy returns.”

Fergus snorts, inhaling a burst of frigid air. “I was going to go, but I wondered whether you wanted to come round and get a takeaway? Might as well do something to celebrate. Don’t bother, if you’re busy.”

“You should have rung me,” Adam says. He shuffles closer, breathing white plumes into the frigid air between them. “As if I’d rather be at some fucking Comms meeting than go home with you.”

Fergus extends a hand and slips it beneath the open front of Adam’s coat, curling it around his hip and tugging him closer. Adam smirks and lets him.

It’s foolish, probably, doing this here. Nevertheless, Adam kisses him and crowds him up against the wall and Fergus’ hands clench tightly in the folds of his shirt. Adam’s breath gusts warm across his mouth and then he’s being kissed again, his mouth licked open with deliberate insistence. Adam’s fingertips graze his side, hot enough to burn through his shirt, leaving him shivering in their wake. Fergus lets himself enjoy it, lets himself lean back against the brickwork and draw Adam closer.

Somewhere, a car door slams. Fergus starts; Adam retreats, but only so far that they’re still breathing one another’s air.

“I’ll get us a cab,” he says, quietly, into the space between them. There’s a pause, as though he’s waiting for Fergus to disagree, and then he ducks away, fishing in his pocket for his phone.

The wall is cold at Fergus’ back. He wishes he had another cigarette. Adam’s back is turned, his head bowed as he scrolls through his contacts, and something about the line of his frame beneath his coat, the vulnerability of the bare skin at the back of his neck is beautiful and compelling. Fergus looks away. It doesn’t belong to them, this tentative care that they’re taking with each other, but he can’t bring himself to pretend to hate it.

The phone is ringing, when Fergus dashes back to the office to grab his coat. He’s tempted to ignore it, because Adam is waiting for him downstairs, and it’s his birthday, and he’d really like to skip to the part of the evening involving Adam fucking him until he can’t see straight. He’s never been able to ignore a ringing phone, on the grounds that it might be something important. It had been important, the time his mum had rung at three in the morning, to tell him his dad was being taken into hospital. Reaching over the desk, his clamps the receiver between chin and shoulder and attempts to put on his coat without dropping it.

“Fergus,” says Michael, sounding put-upon. “What the fuck are you still doing at DoSAC at this time? I’ve tried your house twice.”

Fergus is very tempted to put the phone down and pretend he’d dropped it, after all.

“Look,” Michael continues, “it’s not pleasant, and I’m sorry to do this so close to the election, but you’ve been very fucking stupid with all this business with the immigration documents.”

Michael does not sound sorry in the slightest. Fergus wonders whether it’s possible that pleading sheer dumb ignorance will allow him to wriggle off the hook. "What immigration documents?"

“Don’t play fucking stupid, Fergus. Mary wanted to come over there and deliver the bollocking herself, so be grateful I spared you that. As I say, I’m sorry to do this just before the election, but I’m also completely bloody furious with you - leaking, for fuck’s sake, against your own government, after all the mess with the Goolding emails. I can’t look the other way twice, you bloody idiot. JB’s fucking furious.”

“Michael -”

“Amanda’ll be in touch later about the admin side of things, I imagine. I’d say you had a good run but, well…”

“Michael, can I -"

It becomes clear that Michael has put down the phone. Fergus stares at the receiver in his hand. The office is empty, thank Christ, or Phil might have been around to eavesdrop on the whole embarrassing mess of a conversation.

“Ferg?” Adam appears in the doorway, frowning at him. “What’s up? The fucking Uber’ll be here in a minute.”

Fergus can’t even look at him. “That was Michael.”

It turns out to be a pretty shit birthday, after all.


	11. Chapter 11

Watching dawn break over South London is a uniquely lonely experience. Fergus is hunched over a mug of coffee at the kitchen table watching the sky begin to lighten, wondering whether he’s the only person on his street, in the whole of Camberwell, stupid enough to be up at this hour.

He hasn’t been sleeping properly for weeks. Since clearing his desk at DoSAC, he’s been lucky to get four hours a night, snatched from the hinterland between tossing and turning and stewing about election night, thinking about having to stand on that fucking stage and watch with a gracious smile while that fucking Labour tosspot gives his victory speech, and lying awake listening to Adam breathe, counting the minutes until his alarm goes off.

Adam sleeps like the dead, for all that he’s never seemed to need a full night’s sleep to function, the way Fergus does. He’s the master of snatching a nap at his desk, or with his jacket bunched between his shoulder and his cheek against a train window, whereas Fergus stumbles through his days in a pissed-off, over-caffeinated haze and then lies there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep despite how very, very tired he is.

That morning, Adam had been snoring faintly, lying on his side with his broad, bare back rising and falling in Fergus’ peripheral vision. For all his time at the gym and his morning runs, there’s a doughiness about Adam that Fergus finds maddeningly attractive, because it makes him human and imperfect, possibly flawed enough that he could still want Fergus, too, despite the excessive number of biscuits he consumes. 

He’d shifted, feeling the soft warmth of Adam’s back against his arm. Adam had turned and reached out a hand to still him, but was asleep again before he could take hold of Fergus in any meaningful way. There were unknown hours still to go, before the alarm, so Fergus let himself doze for a bit and when the alarm went off, it took him by surprise. He thumped it quickly, before it could disturb Adam, who murmured something and turned over, putting his back to him again, and stared at the ceiling for a while. It was too dark to make out the shape of the light fitting. Exhaustion tugged behind his eyes.

From the kitchen window, he watches the clouds turn fiery, vivid pink and orange splashed across the horizon while the blackbirds chatter and whistle in next door’s fig tree. He needn’t have set the alarm; it’s Sunday, and it’s been a fucking terrible week. He ought to have lain next to Adam and let the tight, bewildered feeling in his chest dissipate; instead, he’s here, watching the sun come up and thinking about what the fuck he’s going to do when all this - the election, his job - is over.

“’S there coffee?” Adam asks, behind him, his voice soft and creased with sleep.

“Only instant.”

“Fuck that,” Adam says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Mind if I make some proper stuff?”

“Have you got time?”

Adam squints at him and then shrugs. “Wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”

Fergus watches him shuffle over to the draining board to retrieve the hideous novelty Mornington Crescent mug he always uses and then start ferreting in the cupboard for the cafetière and the single origin ground coffee he’d bought in an attempt to prove to Fergus that his perpetual laziness and resorting to Douwe Egberts were responsible for his mornings getting off to a bad start. He reaches over to the radio and switches it on and something obscure and dance-y burbles forth; it’s still tuned to 6 Music from the last time Adam was around in the morning and called Fergus a sad twat for listening to Radio 3.

“Aren’t you going for a run?”

“Thought I’d just do it here,” Adam says, as though this is entirely unremarkable. “Go round Peckham Rye.”

“Yeah,” Fergus says weakly. “Great.”

“Oh, fuck off, you’ve got nothing planned. Don’t pretend you’re busy.”

“I could be.”

“You’re not.”

Fergus is decidedly not busy. He has emails to send, but beyond that stretches a Sunday in which he is, for once, blessedly free of commitments.

“Whatever,” he says, into his shitty coffee, which has gone cold in the interval between making it and Adam’s appearance in the kitchen doorway.

Adam pours both of them a mug of proper coffee, and then props himself in the chair opposite Fergus’ and steals the _Times_ magazine from the pile of papers beside Fergus’ elbow.

He disappears half an hour later, reappears wearing a hoodie, which Fergus hadn’t even realised was part of the collection of Adam’s clothes that have migrated, over the years, into the wardrobe in the spare room.

“Want to come with me?” Adam asks while he ties the laces of his trainers.

Fergus raises his middle finger at him and Adam smirks, sauntering closer, wearing an expression of salacious intent.

On the kitchen counter, Fergus’ phone rings, vibrating against the worktop and startling him into spilling his coffee. He swear and lurches to grab it while Adam hovers next to him, as though he’s considering putting hands on him while he’s trying to have a conversation.

“Hi, Mum,” he says, shooting Adam an admonishing look. He brushes past him to go into the living room, which is ridiculous, because it’s his house and if anyone ought to retreat to give him privacy, it’s Adam.

Ten minutes later, he presses the button to end the call and stands beside the fireplace gazing at the picture on the wall above the sofa. It had been Mum’s housewarming present to him years ago, an acrylic by an artist he’d never heard of, which she’d assured him would be worth something whenever he came to sell it.

“Everything alright?” says Adam, from the doorway.

Fergus glances at him and shoves the phone into his pocket. “It’s fine. The usual. This time she thinks someone’s trying to poison her food. At least she knew who I was, I suppose.”

He presses the heel of his hand into the socket of his left eye, where he can feel a headache brewing.

Adam comes closer, watching him as though Fergus is a wounded animal in the wild. “Sure you don’t want to come with me?”

Fergus kisses him, because he can, because Adam is close enough that Fergus can tell he hasn’t yet had a shower, and Adam presses him briefly against the fireplace, fingers at his hips.

“I’ll be an hour or so,” he says, and then Fergus listens to him retreat down the hall and slam the front door.

He retreats, himself, to the kitchen, and pours the remains of the coffee down the sink. Outside, Arthur is stalking his way across the garden, pausing under the table to peer up at the blackbird in the upper branches of the fig tree. It’s at least five years too late for Fergus to start to panic. He should have started panicking when it became so commonplace for Adam to crash out on the bed in the spare room after a long night that he began thinking of it as Adam’s room. He should have panicked after that first weekend together, when Adam had made the move from the spare room to Fergus’ bed and become a regular fixture in it without either of them commenting on it.

All of which explains why, perhaps, on this particular Sunday afternoon, Fergus walks into the living room to find Adam snoring on the sofa, his feet up on the cushions, and thinks, _I want this. I want you dozing on my sofa every Sunday afternoon for the rest of my life._

He freezes in the doorway in the midst of a crisis, when Adam wakes with a snort and spots him.

“Hey,” he says, rubbing a hand across his eyes but making no attempt to get up. “What time is it?”

Fergus is too flustered to reply, and the last thing he wants is for Adam to notice and start asking questions, so he lurches over to the sofa and looms over him, a hand on the arm and a knee on the cushion beside Adam’s hip.

“Alright,” Adam says, sounding confused, and then Fergus kisses him, ducking his head to press his mouth against Adam’s.

Adam makes a pleased-sounding noise and his arms come up immediately to pull Fergus closer; he collapses into the warm, unyielding line of Adam’s body, and Adam’s lips part around a smile, until Fergus is licking the stale breath out of his mouth.

“What’s brought this on?” Adam murmurs, wriggling to allow Fergus to unzip his jeans and push them off his hips.

Fergus kisses him again to shut him up, gets his own jeans open and his underwear out of the way, and then Adam gets a hand on his arse and pulls him in, until they’re moving against one another in an aimless but extremely pleasant feedback-loop of skin against warm skin.

“Fuck,” says Adam, fervently, into Fergus’ mouth.

The late afternoon sun is coming in through the window and striping the sofa; its liquid heat surrounds them. Adam shifts so that Fergus is trapped on his side between his body and the back of the sofa. It’s ridiculous, because the space is too small, and there are knees and elbows in the way, and Fergus’ mouth tastes of coffee and the pickled onion crisps he’d had with lunch. Adam kisses him languidly anyway, rolls their hips together, and for the next five minutes Fergus doesn’t - can’t - think about anything else.

Adam pads into the kitchen, afterwards, and brings back a couple of squares of kitchen roll for them to clean themselves up with, and it’s while Fergus is watching him wipe their come off his stomach that he says, “Move in with me.”

Adam freezes, wadded bunch of kitchen roll suspended in mid-air.

“I don’t mean straight away. I mean… I mean, you’re practically living here, anyway.”

“Where the fuck has this come from?”

Fergus tries not to flinch. He shrugs. “You’re always whinging about the DLR, and how much easier it is to get to the office from here.”

“So you thought you’d ask me to move in to save me the bother of an inconvenient commute?”

“No. No, I -”

“It’s a month before the fucking election, Fergus. If I moved in, you’d have to come out - ”

“That’d go down well with the students, wouldn’t it?”

“Enough to make up for everything else? Jesus, Ferg. This is why it’s my job to deal with strategy.”

“Alright, forget it. But, after the election, you could move in.”

“Why?”

“What the fuck do you mean, why?”

“You know what I mean. It’s good between us, but it’s not - it’s not that, yet, is it?”

Fergus’s stomach is roiling. _It’s not that_. Of course he knows what Adam means.

“Forget it,” he says, bending down to pick up his jumper, which Adam had peeled off him before bending his head to bite bruises into the skin just above his collarbone, where it will be hidden by his shirt tomorrow. “Just thought it’d make things easier.”

“Well, it wouldn’t.”

“Alright, I said forget it.”

Fergus takes the sodden kitchen roll out of Adam’s hand and walks into the kitchen to throw it away. There, his stomach churning, he stands at the window with his hands on the edge of the sink and watches Arthur make his way stealthily along the top of the garden wall.

He hears Adam enter the room behind him.

“I’m not saying never,” Adam says.

“Fuck off, it’s fine.”

“Right. Well, I need to get back to mine, anyway, get the washing on. Fergus, will you look at me, for fuck’s sake?”

Fergus turns to face him, and Adam is frowning at him, hands on his hips in the kitchen doorway.

“Don’t be a twat about it, alright?” he says. In previous days, he’d have come closer and pressed a kiss to Fergus’ mouth before he leaves. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, instead, and makes a break for the front door, stopping only to tie his shoes and pick up his overnight bag, which had been abandoned by the coat stand.

Fergus watches him go and then realises his jeans are still undone, and there’s a damp stain drying on the front of his shirt.

“Bollocks,” he mutters into the kitchen’s empty, judgemental silence.

They’re on their way back from the station in yet another black cab, two weeks before the impending dissolution of Parliament, when Adam says, low and earnest, without looking at him, “We need to cool it down, a bit.”

Fergus stares, because Adam is looking resolutely out of the window, and it’s just like him to do this in the back of a taxi where he knows Fergus won’t be able to get upset. When Fergus doesn’t respond, Adam glances at him. He looks guilty and defensive, as though he’s waiting for the shouting to start, but he’s timed the conversation so that they’re already driving along Camberwell high street; even if Fergus had wanted a row, there wouldn’t have been time for one.

“You were right,” Adam continues. “When you said we should have waited ’til after the election. It wasn’t the right time.”

Fergus watches him, watches the way Adam gives in and looks away first. _You fucking coward_ , he thinks. 

The taxi pulls up outside Fergus’ house; it occurs to him that Adam has engineered the entire journey to allow him to break the news and then flee; he’d had no intention of coming in, and now he’s on the wrong side of the river, and all because he’d wanted a convenient way of giving Fergus the push.

“We’re alright, though, yeah?” he says, just before Fergus opens the car door.

Fergus unfolds himself onto the pavement and pauses to bend down and look Adam in the eye. “Don’t be a twat about it,” he says.

He slams the door behind him and makes it up the garden path, through the yellow door, and all the way into the kitchen. There, on the draining board, sits the Mornington Crescent mug; it’s only when it’s in pieces on the tiled floor and there’s a chunk missing from the door of the cupboard above the toaster that Fergus realises his hands are shaking.

_A_ _s it was in the beginning_ , Fergus thinks, two weeks later, as the squash ball slams into the upper corner of the court and rebounds straight over his left shoulder, leaving Adam pumping the air with his fist and grinning madly in his direction. They shuffle into the changing rooms, shower and dress while Adam makes snide comments about some unfortunate private secretary at the MoJ, and then they’re standing on the pavement outside the gym, talking their way around awkward goodbyes.

“See you in the morning,” Adam says, in the end, as he swings his kit bag over his shoulder and heads for the Tube station. Fergus watches him go, wishing it were a month ago and he could have hooked his fingers under the elastic of Adam’s ridiculous gym shorts and hauled him into a corner of the changing rooms and kissed him before he’d had a chance to make good his escape.

If it were a month ago, he would have let Fergus blow him in the showers, even though it was foolhardy and one of these days they weren’t going to hear the changing room door swing open in time. He would have let Fergus take him home and they would have eaten dinner and bitched at one other about the washing up, and then he would have let Fergus press him into the sofa cushions with lazy kisses and take him upstairs and slowly take him to pieces, and Fergus would have cherished every single fucking second of it, knowing how fleeting it would all turn out to be.

The silence, when Fergus gets home, is oppressive. It follows him from room to room, and when he puts on the radio to drown it out, it only makes things worse. He can’t bear the sound of Marc Riley’s voice; he can’t bear 6 Music very often, anymore, but he hasn’t changed the preset stations. He switches to Radio 4, but it’s an appalling comedy programme, and Radio 3 offers only a dismal documentary about Chopin.

Eventually, wine in hand, he pulls out his phone - not his BlackBerry - and scrolls through the notifications that have accrued during the day on the app he downloaded three days after Adam ended things. None of them interest him, particularly.

The next morning, shuffling into Portcullis House feeling sleep-deprived and miserable, he notes the way Adam’s gaze flickers over the dark circles under his eyes and suffers a vicious, vindictive surge of hope, that Adam thinks he responded to one of the uninspiring messages, and that Adam is jealous. Adam’s eyes slide right off him and settle on the latest intern sent to them from party HQ while he relays instructions about the coffee order, and Fergus continues into the office and shuts the door behind him, feeling foolish and petty and all the things guaranteed to make him waspish and sullen for the rest of the morning.

The intern brings him a salad from the nice cafe around the corner at quarter past one and Fergus is seized with the desire to fling it at her head, but Adam appears five minutes later and sits himself down in the chair opposite and strikes up conversation about the school hustings on Tuesday, and Fergus reasons for the twelfth time in as many days that he's damned if he's going to let Adam have the monopoly on moving on and handling things maturely. He stabs his salad with unnecessary force, listens to Adam talk, and realises he isn‘t worried, anymore, about what happens if he loses the election; he‘s worried what happens if he wins, and the rest of his life becomes one long, unsatisfying lunch in which he isn’t allowed, anymore, to tip his foot against the inside of Adam’s calf under the cover of his desk and leave it there until Adam smiles at him in between bites of his sandwich.

It turns out he needn’t have worried. Election night is everything Fergus had feared it would be. The two Liberal Youth loyalists are glum and dispirited, while on the other side of the hall, the Labour camp brims with optimism, their candidate surrounded by a small army of student volunteers all wearing red t-shirts and brightly polished smiles. Somewhere, outside, Sam is lurking with his placards; _Look East_ has already interviewed him twice.

“Could you try to look less like you’re about to burst into fucking tears, then?” Adam snaps, when Fergus complains for the third time about the cameras.

He considers, briefly, keeping his cool. “Why don’t you just fuck off, Adam,” he replies, instead, and takes himself outside for a cigarette.

It’s only when he gets outside, through a fire escape which has been propped open to allow fresh air into the stifling heat of the hall, that he remembers he hasn’t got any cigarettes on him. Just one of the changes since the last time he stood here, awaiting an election result. Fucking hell. If he were going to cry - fuck you, Adam, very much - it’d be here, on the concrete ramp, feeling like too much of a twat to head back inside, and too much of a coward to do anything else. It crosses his mind, briefly, to wonder what would happen if he sacked the whole thing off and simply caught a taxi back to the station, leaving Adam to make the fucking concession speech he’d tucked into Fergus’ pocket just before they left the constituency office that afternoon.

“Thought you might need of one of these,” Adam says from the doorway, shaking a pack of menthols in his direction.

Fergus considers telling him where to stick them; it must have been obvious from his expression, because Adam huffs a laugh and takes one out of the packet himself, holding it between his lips while he lights it.

He comes to stand beside Fergus by the railing at the edge of the wheelchair ramp and leans his elbows upon it. He takes a deep lungful of smoke and blows it out steadily before holding the cigarette in Fergus’ direction. “Just take it, you melodramatic twat,” he says.

Fergus does, putting his lips to the damp paper where Adam’s have just been. He passes it back, and they continue in silence, passing it between them while the distant chatter of the hall becomes unimportant background noise. It’s gone four; in an hour or so’s time, they’ll know for certain what everyone has already assumed.

“Somewhere, Glenn’s finding all of this fucking hilarious,” Fergus says, eventually, when the silence between them has passed beyond comfortable and begun to set his teeth on edge.

“If I gave a fuck what Monarch of the fucking Glenn thought, I’d have thrown myself under the train on the way up here.”

Fergus flicks ash onto the asphalt below and hands the cigarette back to Adam; there’s a necessary level of skin against skin, fingers brushing against fingers, with this kind of manoeuvre, and it hasn’t escaped Fergus’ notice that, if this were two months previously, it would all have been a precursor to Adam pushing him up against the brickwork and sticking his tongue down his throat.

“I’m going to do some work for the GLA,” he says, in the end. “You haven’t fucking asked, but that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Ferg -”

Adam has reacted with superstitious anxiety every time Fergus has tried to bring up his plans for the future. Fergus suspects it’s guilt; he knows for a fact Adam’s already been tapped up by the Labour Comms team. Phil, in an act of pettiness that almost persuaded Fergus of the benefit of getting himself suspended from the party for punching him in the face in the middle of the department, had practically been vibrating with glee when he’d told Fergus he’d spotted Ollie Reeder emerging from a lunch meeting with Adam at _Barboni’s_ , the day before Michael had given him his marching orders from DoSAC.

“It’s fine,” Fergus says, taking a final drag of the cigarette. He stubs it on the railing and tosses it into the darkness beyond the fire escape. “Some environmental policy advisory thing. We don’t need to have a fucking heart-to-heart about it.”

“When do you start?”

“July. I’m going down to Suffolk for a bit, first; need to see about getting rid of Mum and Dad’s cottage.”

“On your own?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Adam. Yes, on my own. I haven’t been shagging anybody else, if that’s your way of asking -“

“It wasn’t,” Adam says, smirking in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m not starting anything new until the last week of June.”

“Good for you,” Fergus says, feeling spiteful and petty. “Take someone on a fucking holiday. I’m going back inside.”

Fifty minutes later, the returning officer confirms what everyone in the hall had already known to be true: that for Fergus, his parliamentary ambitions have come to an end.“Christopher Hathaway, the Labour Party, 19,033… Fergus Williams, the Liberal Democrats, 6,607. I hereby declare that Christopher Hathaway is duly elected as the Member of Parliament for Norwich South.”

A week after the election, Fergus hires a car and packs enough clothes and paperbacks into it to last him a couple of weeks before he’ll need to do any washing or go in search of other forms of entertainment. He takes a circuitous route to the Suffolk coast, stopping first in Royston and finding his mum in a chair on the nursing home’s patio, looking out over its unbroken view of the heath. She’s dressed in a jumper he can’t remember buying for her, and she smiles at him when he sets foot through the patio doors.

“Hello, Mum,” he says. “I’ve brought you some flowers.”

“Oh,” she says, looking at the bunch of purple alstroemerias wrapped in a carrier bag from the petrol station up the road. “Aren’t they lovely. I’ll ask Margaret if she’s got a vase you can put them in.”

“Margaret isn’t here, Mum.”

“Oh, well. I expect Donald will know what to do.”

“Probably,” Fergus says, too tired to correct her. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

She is gazing out over the heath again, frowning at the horizon as though it troubles her. He sits down anyway and puts the flowers on the table.

“Mum,” he says, hoping to capture her attention, but she continues her vigil over the view. He takes her hand, gently. It feels like he imagines a bird’s wing to be: papery and thin, with a delicate web of fragile bones. “Mum, I lost the seat. No more bragging to the carers about your son, the MP, I’m afraid.”

For a long moment, she says nothing. Then, frowning, she turns to him as though seeing him there for the first time. “Well, what are you going to do?” she says. It’s her teacher’s voice, the one she used to use when she tutored the village children for the eleven plus, long after Fergus had departed for university and Dad had gone, and she’d been left rattling around the house by herself. 

“No idea,” he says, hopelessly. “Not a fucking clue.”

“Don’t swear, Donald,” she tells him, and he holds her hand until the carers come to take her back inside for dinner.


	12. Chapter 12

**Westminster, 2016**

“They’ve moved the fucking press conference!”

What could generously be described as the Parliamentary Labour Party’s clandestine EU Referendum taskforce, and more accurately as the flotsam and jetsam of previous administrations united temporarily under the banner of not fucking the country up the arse, is gathered in Ollie Reeder’s office. Adam is nursing a hangover, hunched over a large cup of coffee and wondering whether this is really what his political ambitions have amounted to: sharing an enclosed space with Helen Hatley, Ben Swain and the other limping refugees of the party’s most recent regime change.

On Adam’s left, Angela Cartwright is perched on the edge of her seat, darting contemptuous eyes at her co-conspirators. Adam likes to think of her as Glenn in reverse: just as ideologically confused, just as useless, and with the same propensity for harping on about principles and ethics when all anyone needs her to do is make a sodding decision. She’s here because she crossed the floor in the aftermath of the election to join John Kirby’s bunch of hippies, and while she might be in complete agreement with her new leader on 100% inheritance tax and free xylophones for the under fives, she’s a dyed-in-the-wool Europhile, with a French wife and two adorable, dual-nationalitied children. 

“That pig-fucking Bullingdon wanker’s going to be announcing the referendum in twenty minutes’ time, which means we haven’t got time to get someone in front of a fucking camera.”

“For God’s sake, Ollie, calm down,” Helen says, without taking her eyes off the document Reeder had slid into their hands ten minutes ago, before he was called away to take a phone call from someone in the know at Number 10. “Dan’s okay to make a statement; I’ve got Channel 4 ready to speak to him at 3.30.”

“I thought I was making the statement,” says Swain, blinking at her in dull surprise.

“No,”she and Reeder reply, firmly.

“Look,” says David, backbencher for Bristol West, from his seat by the door, “lovely as it is to sit around discussing media strategy with people whose job it is to make sure I don’t have to think about such things, do you think we could get on?”

“Yes, come on, Ollie. Some of us are Shadow Cabinet,” says Angela, “and do have rather more pressing matters to attend to.”

“Right, alright. I’ve called you here today on behalf of Dan, to talk about strategy, in light of JB’s imminent opening of Pandora’s box, and our own glorious leader’s inability to come out with a coherent statement of intent.”

“I’d like to register my discomfort at the tone of the discussion, by the way,” says Angela. “This puts me in a very difficult decision, Ollie, as you’re well aware.”

“Oh, come on, Angela. You’ve sailed across the floor for a man who can’t fucking decide whether his first priority ought to be keeping Britain in the customs union or making fucking jam.”

“Come on, then, Ollie - tell us what the big plan is, so we can toddle off to our offices and start fomenting discontent.”

“Fuck off, Ben. Dan’s going to make his statement later this afternoon, after which we need as many of you lot as possible to come out strongly in favour of remain. We need to hold our glorious leader’s feet over the coals on this, make sure he doesn’t let his personal opinions get in the way of setting a sensible direction for us over the next four months.”

“JB’s on,” says Helen, turning up the volume on the TV, as the Prime Minister’s face, the colour and texture of overcooked ham, appears behind the podium outside Number 10.

“ _Three years ago, I committed to the British people that I would renegotiate our position within the European Union and hold an in/out referendum -_ “

“Rats in a fucking barrel,” Angela murmurs, for Adam’s benefit. She casts a scornful look around the room. “This is what we crossed the fucking floor for.”

Three days later, Adam has just finished a shepherd’s pie and is drinking an appalling Americano at the Mitre and Crown on Old Brompton Road, a healthy distance from Westminster, when Ollie Reeder arrives thirty minutes late for their lunch meeting.

“Finally, the forty-year-old virgin. Better late than fucking never.”

Reeder sits down opposite him with a grimace. “Yeah, yeah, you know for a fact that isn’t true, because for at least three months, back in the day, Angela was very fucking happy with the things I could do with my penis.”

For a horrifying moment, Adam wonders why Reeder feels the need to inform him that he once fucked Angela Cartwright. The realisation that Ollie is, in fact, still wearing his fleeting relationship with Angela Heaney as a badge of honour, twelve years after the fact, is something of a relief. “Must be why it only lasted that long. Which, ironically, is exactly what Angela used to say. What do you want? Was all this cloak and dagger bullshit really necessary?”

“We need to talk about Kirby, don’t we? And we can’t do that with his fucking spies all over the place.”

“Is ickle Ollie sad because the Militant tendency won’t let him come in and play?”

“Fuck off. I’m not the only one out in the cold, am I? We’re all fucking outcasts under the new regime.”

Adam is forced to concede the point. Since being lured to Victoria Street, he’s watched Kirby systematically sideline every front bencher from the Tom, Murray and Miller years, and he can’t deny that his own prospects have taken a corresponding nose-dive.

Ollie orders a BLT and a plate of chips before he decides to get to the fucking point. “How much stomach do you have for the cut-and-thrust of modern politics?” he enquires. “Emphasis on the cut, as in, we’re about to perform a Kirby-ectomy without anaesthetic.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “I take it Dan’s going to be leading the White Guard for the counter-revolution?”

“Oh, fuck off, Adam. We need the leadership to make a coherent statement about our position on Europe, but Kirby can’t, can he, because he’s all for bricking up the sodding Channel Tunnel. Is it any wonder the Millerites are about to form a fucking splinter group?”

Adam has little enough patience with Reeder at the best of times, but in this mood, he’s positively revolting. “What’s this got to do with me?”

“Well, like I say, Kirby’s got to go, hasn’t he?”

“He’s got the great, unwashed masses chanting his fucking name at Glastonbury. He could snap his fingers tomorrow and it’d be Jonestown in the CLP. How the fuck are you planning to oust him?”

Reeder leans back in his seat. “By playing,” he says, raising his eyebrows in a manner that makes him look completely unhinged, “the long game.”

“Speak fucking sense, Ollie.”

“Every nutter with questionable views about Israel’s suddenly popping their head above the parapet, aren’t they? Everyone knows Red Ted was a fucking liability at the Mayor’s Office, and Kirby’s been on a fucking stage singing Kumbaya with half the leadership of the PLA. If he’s been as much use as a chocolate fireguard on Europe, how much of a cock-up d’you think he’ll make of an internal inquiry?”

Adam would be prepared to re-mortgage his flat on Ollie not having given a shiny shit about his party’s historic problems with antisemitism at any point in the last decade. He looks at Ollie’s smug, shiny face and recalls, dimly, a time when he and Fergus had sat in a pub in Paddington and talked, in small terms, about changing the fucking world.

Fergus gets the call about his mum while he’s shuffling around the kitchen making a pot of coffee, listening to _Today._ He fishes his phone out of the pocket of his dressing gown expecting it to be Adam.

“Bit early, isn’t it?” he asks, clamping the phone between his shoulder and ear while he attempts to scoop grounds into the cafetière without spilling any on the worktop. 

“Mr Williams?” says a woman’s voice he doesn’t recognise. “My name’s Janet, I’m calling from St Michael’s in Royston.”

“Shit.” Fergus grabs the phone and holds it closer to his ear, jamming the lid on the coffee jar with his other hand. “Sorry. What’s happened? Has she had another fall?”

“No, Mr Williams.” Janet’s voice is sombre and sincere. Fergus pauses in his attempt to shove the coffee jar back onto the shelf, where an over-stuffed box of teabags has overflowed. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.”

Janet is terribly kind about it. “In her sleep,” she explains, when Fergus asks how it happened.

“Did she - was there anyone with her?” It’s a stupid fucking thing to ask, because of course there wasn’t anyone with her. She died in the middle of the night. He wonders whether it happened while he was asleep, or if she’d already gone by the time he dragged himself up the stairs at one in the morning, having stayed up to watch _Life of Brian_ on BBC Two.

“When will you be coming down to make the arrangements?” Janet asks gently.

The jar of coffee slips out of Fergus’ hand and shatters on the floor between his bare feet. He swears as coffee grounds and shards of glass cover the kitchen floor. “Sorry - fuck, sorry. I’ve dropped something - can I call you back?”

“Are you alright, Mr Williams?”

Fergus nearly laughs. What exactly is Janet going to do about it, if he isn’t? “Fine,” he assures her. “I’m fine. I’m sorry, I’ll have to call you back.”

He looks down at the mess around his feet and tries to move out of the way. His left foot descends on a sliver of the broken jar. There are shards of glass everywhere, and now he’s bleeding on the floor tiles. He reaches for the kitchen roll and starts picking up the biggest of the pieces of the jar. There’s blood on the paper towel, now, too, and he reaches for another piece to mop up the mess from the gash on the sole of his foot.

Suddenly, desperately, with a hot thrill of misery, he wishes Adam - or anyone, really, but mostly Adam - were upstairs, or sprawled in the living room with a newspaper, so that he could call out to him and Adam could come ambling in, a frown of concern on his face, and tell him what the fuck to do next. He wishes, madly, that Adam would happen to have been on his way round, and use his spare key to let himself in, and find Fergus here, bloody and covered in coffee in the middle of the kitchen floor, and put everything back together for him, so that he wouldn’t have to.

In the end, he cleans the floor as best he can and sweeps the broken glass into the bin. Then he sets off for Royston, the skies above the motorway darkening with every mile further he gets, making him feel like a character in a Shakespearian tragedy.

When he gets to the home, Janet ushers him into a cosy relatives’ room, which must have borne witness to hundreds of similar conversations in its time, and tells him that the GP has already been and a death certificate has been issued.

“She’s in her room,” she tells him, with such care that he wants to snap at her to speak to him as though he were a normal, sane human being. He’s aware, however, that this might be counterproductive to her believing him. “Would you like to see her?”

Fergus can’t imagine anything worse, but she’s looking at him expectantly, as though this is something relatives normally want to do. He doesn’t want to come across as heartless. He doesn’t want her judging him, the absent son with the job in London, who only visited once a month and now doesn’t even want to see her one last time. He nods and gets to his feet and follows her through corridors that smell overwhelmingly of disinfectant, to the door of his mum’s room.

Janet touches him gently on the arm. “Would you like someone to be with you?”

“No, thanks.”

“Take as long as you need.”

She pities him, probably thinks it sad, that he’s here alone. Just the two of them, he and his mum, as it has been for years. He wonders whether Janet is making assumptions, and then tells himself now is not the time to be so bloody self-centred. He puts his hand on the door and lets himself inside.

A lamp has been left on in the corner of the room and he could well have believed she were merely asleep, except she’s been laid out on top of the covers, and someone has folded her hands neatly together, too perfectly placed for her to be sleeping. She looks at peace, he thinks. And then he thinks, does she? Does she look at peace, or is that just what I’m supposed to believe? She looks absent. She looks like a space in a room where my mum used to be, an old lady who hasn’t remembered my name in nearly a year.

He manages nearly a minute in the gloom of the single, dim lamp, before he hurls himself back into the corridor.

In the relatives’ room, Janet talks about what happens next. She asks whether he’s already made arrangements about a funeral, whether he’d like her to recommend a local firm, and hands him a leaflet which he takes out into the carpark with him. In the end, he drives to Grafham Water and parks the car overlooking the lake, in the car park next to the cycling hire centre, to make the necessary calls. The sky above the water is the colour of a darkening bruise, and mid-way through the conversation it starts to rain, hammering on the roof of the car so loudly he has to apologise for asking the funeral director to repeat himself.

He’d thought of Grafham Water because it was the last place he’d taken her, when she was still well enough for day trips. He’d helped her walk along the path by the nature reserve and she’d named the species of birds that used to visit the garden at the house, when she used to put out seed for them and sit in the conservatory, watching them come down to feed.

Forty minutes later, arrangements made, he drives back to the home and Janet tells him the funeral director has already been in touch; his mum - Janet carefully avoids talking about the body, and Fergus wishes she wouldn’t keep referring to her as though she were still alive - will be taken to the chapel of rest, where he can see her again, if he’d like to, before the funeral. Is there a particular outfit he’d like her to be buried in? Fergus honestly has no idea; every time he’s visited, she’s been wearing the same rotating pairs of colourful matched skirts and blouses. Janet assures him she’ll choose something nice, if that’s what he’d like her to do.

The only thing Fergus remembers to ask before he leaves is when he’ll need to collect her belongings: the few framed photographs and clothes and books she still has with her in the darkened room. Janet assures him that they’ll keep them until after the funeral, if necessary; he’ll need to come and sign for them, when he’s ready.

He sets off back to London at just gone five in the afternoon, and he’s stopped for coffee and a piss at Birchanger Green services when he realises, with a flash of melodrama that seems incongruous in a Costa Coffee overlooking the M11, that he’s the only member of his family left, now. He’s an orphan: a ridiculous statement for a man of forty three. He literally doesn’t know who, other than himself and a handful of friends and neighbours from Royston, will be there at the funeral. That, more than anything else, strengthens the growing conviction that he has been, for all intents and purposes, a fucking terrible son.

He gets back to Camberwell just after eight o’clock because of the traffic. He’s pulling into the only remaining parking space along the pavement outside the house when he realises that tonight was supposed to have been his squash night with Adam. Sure enough, when he checks his phone, he’s got five missed calls and three voicemails. He can’t bare to listen to Adam being cross with him, so he ignores the message alerts and goes straight to his contacts: Adam’s number is at the top of the list, in any case.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Adam demands when he answers, sounding pissed off and far away.

“Adam,” Fergus says, hating the quaver in his voice. He’s held himself together all fucking afternoon and now, huddled in his car with Adam at the other end of the phone, he’s suddenly incapable of maintaining it. “Adam, it’s Mum.”

The crematorium is a dismal, utilitarian concrete edifice in the midst of a council-maintained garden of remembrance, and as Adam pulls the car into the carpark, Fergus wishes he’d arranged some sort of bland, Anglican service at the parish church instead. The last time he’d set foot in the crem. had been at his dad’s funeral in 1998, and he hadn’t particularly wanted to set foot there again, but Mum had once expressed a desire to be scattered off the cliffs at Dunwich, so that had been that.

There’s already a small congregation of elderly mourners huddled near the entrance, none of whom Fergus recognises. He’s spent the last week with Mum’s old address book, ringing round her circle of friends from the WI and the long-suffering neighbours who’d put up with the forgetfulness and the increasingly odd behaviour in the year or so before Fergus insisted she move to the home. Most of them had died, in the interim, or moved away, or were now in the grip of dementia themselves and therefore unable to attend. It’s a sad reckoning, after eighty-two years of existence: to be remembered by a handful of acquaintances and an absent son whose black suit makes him look like the maitre d’ at an unfashionable restaurant, and whose erstwhile not-quite-boyfriend had had to order him to get in the passenger seat of the hire car when they were leaving London because he’d deemed it unsafe for him to drive.

“Ready?” Adam asks.

Fergus eyes the entrance of the chapel, where the minister has appeared and is making ready to meet the coffin when the hearse arrives. On the awful journey to the crematorium last time, in the back of the funeral car with Mum crying quietly into a crumpled tissue, he’d fished around in his pocket for a handkerchief to give to her, then realised he’d left it at the house after he ducked outside for a cigarette just before the cars arrived. He’d sat next to her uselessly, certain that his dad, who was the sort of man who always had a handkerchief to hand, would have felt that he was falling far short of whatever measure of responsibility it took to assume the mantle of being the man of the family.

“No. Might as well get on with it, though.”

He doesn’t make any attempt to move and after a moment a hand descends on his, where it’s clenched on his knee, leaving creases in the fabric of his ill-fitting suit trousers. “Say the word, and we fuck off again, alright?”

“It’s my Mum’s funeral, Adam -”

“ - and you’re never going to see any of these fuckers again. You brought a getaway driver; might as well make use of me, if you need to.” Fergus nods tightly and Adam lets go, his eyes skipping away across the asphalt.

Fergus sighs. “Let’s get this fucking over with.”

Every one of his mum’s friends shakes he and the minister by the hand on the way out of the chapel and says how lovely the service was. Obviously, they’re lying. The service was just as dismal as the setting, comprising a biography supplied by Fergus during which the minister had had to check his notes twice before he could remember her name, followed by a mawkish Bible reading and a lacklustre chorus of the Lord’s Prayer. By the time he’s shaken the minister’s hand and the neighbours and friends have begun to drift away, Fergus is furious.

“Why did I agree to the Bible verse?” he demands as he and Adam stride across the carpark. “Beyond a sing-song at Christmas and donating for the church roof, I don’t think she even believed in God. All the fucking bullshit about ‘I will give you rest’… I didn’t see anyone giving her any fucking rest while she went fucking senile in that fucking home.”

Adam opens the car door for him. “Was it what she would have wanted?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Fergus says, hurling himself into the passenger seat. “I suppose so.”

“Well, then,” Adam replies, and goes round to get into the driver’s side.

It isn’t a long drive back to London, but the motorway is monotonous and Fergus has barely been sleeping, lately. Adam has put the radio on - Radio 4, even though he generally despises it. Fergus nods off just past Stevenage and dozes most of the way back to London with his head propped awkwardly against the window. When he wakes up, his neck shrieks in protest and he’s forced to sit there wincing and blinking in the amber glow of the street lights for a few minutes, watching Adam drive. Adam’s changed the channel on the radio, and he’s humming along to it quietly, as though reluctant to disturb him, frowning absent-mindedly at the road in concentration. For the first time that whole, horrible day, Fergus’ throat tightens and he has to spend a number of seconds blinking steadily at the view out of the passenger window.

“We’re nearly back,” Adam murmurs, glancing at him as they crawl around Hanger Lane gyratory, brake lights all around them reflecting off the wet tarmac.

“I know,” Fergus snaps, wishing he hadn’t fallen asleep.

By the time Adam pulls up outside the house, it’s nearly seven o’clock. Adam’s taken a day off work for this, Fergus has kept reminding himself at inopportune moments during the day. He wonders what the morons at Victoria Street know about it; whether Adam has told them it’s Fergus’ mum who’s died, Fergus whose hand he’s had to hold. Pointless, trivial concerns. Why should Fergus care, if that useless sack of shit Ben Swain guesses that he and Adam have been shagging? Some miserable part of him would, perhaps, be quite pleased, if they all knew.

“I ought to have said thanks,” he mutters, when Adam ushers him out of the car, up the path and through the front door. “For everything today. D’you want a cup of tea?”

Adam responds by nudging his way into Fergus’ personal space and kissing him softly. His fingers curl gently around the wrist of the hand with which Fergus had been about to hang up his scarf and strokes there with the pad of his thumb, a tiny, careful, soothing gesture that has Fergus swooning and cursing himself for it immediately.

“Fuck the tea,” Adam says. He tugs Fergus towards him gently and loops an arm around his shoulders. “You don’t need to say thank you, you twat,” he murmurs into the thinning hair at Fergus’ temple.

Fergus knows how the rest of the evening goes: Adam will kiss him again and, just as on the previous six occasions that this has happened in the almost-a-year since Adam told him the pair of them were making a mistake, Fergus will allow himself to be led upstairs. He’s so off-kilter and exhausted that he’ll probably end up crying while Adam fucks him, or blurting something raw and humiliating that will make Adam back away from him, appalled.

“Adam, I can’t do this,” he says tightly, when Adam ducks his head to press their lips together a second time.

Adam sighs against his mouth and peels away to rub a hand over his face. He glances at Fergus apologetically, his eyes sympathetic and understanding. “No. Shit. Sorry, I’m a twat.”

“It’s fine,” Fergus says.

“It’s not. Sorry. I’ve got some shit to do for work, anyway. D’you want me to stay? Not for - just, d’you want company?”

“No, you go. I’m fine.” Adam looks at him dubiously. “Seriously, I’ll be fine. It’s not your problem - you’ve got stuff to do.”

“Nothing that can’t be cancelled.”

This is the problem: this niceness, this courtesy. He hates it; he wants Adam to be sharp with him, to tell him to pull himself together. There’s a vulnerability in Adam’s voice when they’re together, these days, and it’s unfair; it’s the kind of evidence that could fool Fergus into imagining things between them to be something that they’re categorically not. Being kept at arm’s length for weeks and then drawn closer and spoken to with such casual intimacy is leaving him with whiplash.

“Well, I’ve got stuff to do, too,” he says, decisively. “Sorry.”

“A simple ‘fuck off’ would have sufficed.”

“Alright, fuck off. Thanks, though,” Fergus adds. “I wasn’t sure I could get through it.”

Adam gives him a downturned smile, and Fergus wants to kiss him very badly. It’s the very worst thing he could do, in this horrible, raw, exhausted moment, so he looks away when Adam pauses on the front step. “Still on for Wednesday? I can move it, if you want.”

Fucking squash. Fucking Adam and his fucking rituals. 

“Yeah, see you then,” Fergus says and closes the front door behind him.


	13. Chapter 13

**Suffolk, 2016**

The cottage sits at the top of a winding cliff-side path, separated from the sea by a strip of wind-swept garden, a vertiginous drop, and a shingle beach that disappears entirely at high tide and crashes and hisses with every broken and reclaimed wave. The familiar rasp of water frothing over the pebbles lulls Fergus to sleep in the small hours of the morning, but then he’s awake again just after dawn and has learned to string himself out through the day on caffeine and, every now and again, one of the pills the GP prescribed which knock him out for twelve hours and leave him less sleep-deprived but, somehow, barely any better rested.

The cottage was supposed to have been sold by now. That first visit, after the election, he’d still held out hope that Adam had meant it, when he’d said the election was the thing that made he and Fergus an impossibility. He’d allowed himself to picture a vague, distant future in which the two of them and the cottage featured heavily; he’d had to stop thinking about it, because it him miserable, and he was miserable enough, thank you, being jobless and unmoored and washed up in Suffolk. There’s been a constant stream of small things that have needed fixing, since then: windows that had to be replaced and skirting boards he found someone to come in and paint. He’s been telling himself for six months that he’ll sell it as soon as the next job is finished, but then he turns up the next month for a snatched long weekend and spots something else that could do with a bit of attention and the deadline passes.

The phone signal is spotty and temperamental in the house, but at the foot of the garden, overlooking the perpetually grey North Sea, it’s better. Fergus is huddled there, now, against the wind, listening to Rick, who he last worked with at nPower nearly a decade ago, tell him about a job opportunity that sounds outrageously out of Fergus’ league.

“No, see, that’s what I’m telling you; we want you because of your political experience. All the stuff you’ve been doing with the green lobby, it’s exactly what we’re looking for.”

“How do you know about that?” Fergus asks, bewildered by the thought of Rick, in his office in New York, paying attention to his activities in the aftermath of getting the heave-ho from parliament.

“I’m not calling on a whim. When we want someone, we do our research. We’ve got a big contract coming up with one of the West Coast energy companies, and we need someone who knows the sector.”

It’s preposterous, but flattering, to be head-hunted. The mere idea of it, that someone has looked upon his lobbying work and seen something of value in it, carries with it the slightest whiff of vindication. He’s imagining Adam’s face when he tells him about it; let him swivel on his Remain UK bullshit, then.

“It’s an attractive offer,” he concedes, when Rick presses him for a response. “I’m not disinterested.”

“Great,” Rick says. “Listen, take some time to think it over. Don’t wait too long, though. We need someone by the end of the summer.”

During the drive back to London, with the radio turned down so he can think, he churns through a list of pros and cons of taking the job. It’s flattering to be asked, but feeling vaguely charmed by Rick, who has always been a persuasive bastard and too smooth for his own good, is no basis for uprooting an entire life and moving to another continent. But, a part of himself wonders grimly, what life would he actually be giving up? Consultancy work with the IPRR; weekly squash games with Adam, occasionally followed by Adam coming back to his and persuading Fergus to fuck him, and then disappearing the following morning with an absent-minded kiss on Fergus’ bare shoulder and his eyes already glued to his phone. They’ve slept together seven times since the election, now, and on each occasion Adam has made it abundantly clear that Fergus’ convenience as an occasional, casual shag is far outstripped by Adam’s own importance, now that he’s in the pro-EU cabal with Reeder and Dan Miller, and that he has better things to do, these days, than hang around on a Saturday morning drinking coffee in Fergus’ tiny, tangerine-coloured kitchen.

A dickhead in an Audi cuts in front of him without indicating and Fergus swears at them explosively, earning himself a raised middle finger and a hand gesture informing him that he’s a wanker. He considers, briefly, exiting the motorway early just to follow the Audi for a while, to seek an argument and give some of the rage simmering in his chest an outlet, but he continues on his way and the slip road recedes in the mirror.

His phone rings while he’s pulling off the motorway and he fumbles for the button on the incomprehensible digital display that will let him answer it via Bluetooth, hoping he isn’t cleared up by a lorry in the meantime.

“Fergus? It’s Carole.”

“Carole, hi,” Fergus says, moving into the outside lane. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Carole replies, indistinct and sounding as though she’s ringing from a busy room. “I’ve got some bad news about Leticia.”

“Not the fucking deportation order again?”

“No. Are you driving?”

“No,” Fergus says, swinging around the roundabout onto Finchley Road. “Come on, what’s happened?”

“She’s had another stroke. I know you were planning to come up for the appeal meeting -”

“Fucking hell.”

“She’s okay. Well, she’s in the Norfolk, Jennifer’s with her.”

“Should I still come up?”

“Well, the meeting’s going ahead, but it’ll just be Dominic throwing down the evidence for the ECHR exemption again, now this has happened.”

“Is it that bad?”

“I understand she hasn’t regained consciousness.”

“Fucking hell,” Fergus says again, gazing at the row of red brake lights snaking up the road ahead.

“Fergus, I’m sorry, I only called to let you know - I’ve got to go. I’ll call you if there’s any news.”

The traffic crawls to a standstill in Finchley and fails to pick up the rest of the way through Westminster and across Vauxhall Bridge, so by the time he gets back to the house, it’s dark and there aren’t any parking spaces. He finds a spot almost on the corner of the main road, grabs his bag from the boot and scurries home with his waterproof over his head to keep off the rain. It means he fails to see Adam waiting for him under the overhang of the front door until he’s through the front gate and fumbling for his keys.

“Fucking hell,” he snaps, nearly dropping them when Adam looms at him out of the darkness.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Adam demands, drenched and grumpy, looking like a cat that’s been left out in the rain. “We said seven.”

“It’s only quarter past, been stuck in traffic. What are you doing out here?”

“Haven’t got my fucking key, have I? Remember, I took it off the fob last month -”

“Get out of the way, then. What the fuck’s that?”

Adam eyes the plastic bag in his hand with antipathy. “Fish and chips. Cold by now.”

“Well, that’s not my fault, is it?”

Fergus unlocks the door and Adam follows him inside, handing him the bag and stomping up the stairs while peeling off his sodden scarf.“Right, well, I’ll stick this in the oven then, shall I?” Fergus mutters, taking it through to the kitchen.

When Adam reappears, he’s towelling off his hair and scowling at Fergus from the kitchen doorway, watching him faff about with the oven. Fergus shoves the fish and chips - stone cold and with grease seeping through its paper wrapping - onto a baking tray and then fumbles in a drawer, leaning over to deposit something into Adam’s hand.

“Didn’t need it, in the end,” he says, as Adam fishes in his pocket and returns the spare key to its place on his keyring. “Arsehole didn’t even turn up. Some bollocks about a shortage of engineers. What’s up with you?”

Adam shoves the keys back into his pocket and raises an eyebrow. “Do you actually give a shit?”

“Oh, well, forget it, then -"

“Well, you’re normally such a fucking bitch about everything to do with that place -”

“You’re the one that chose to work with those idiots. You can fuck off again, if you’d rather, you know.”

Adam sighs and shuts his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb and looking utterly, thoroughly exhausted. Fergus feels vaguely guilty, because it’s the kind of admission of weakness Adam only makes when he’s brewing a migraine, or nearing the end of his tether with the arseholes at Victoria Street.

“Sit the fuck down,” Fergus snaps, in the end. “I’ll get you some paracetamol.”

“Had some,” Adam mutters, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table.

“Bloody idiot. Why didn’t you just go home?”

Adam says nothing, settling for sinking his head into his hands, so Fergus busies himself with filling the kettle and setting out a couple of mugs. By the time he’s made tea and placed a slightly warmer than cold plate of greasy fish and chips in front of Adam, he’s looking considerably less ashen and perks up enough to demand that Fergus unearth the pot of posh tartare sauce from the back of the fridge.

“What’s up with you, then?” he demands, depositing a dollop of sauce on the side of his plate. “You look worse than I do, and I’ve gone three rounds with Dan fucking Miller on the press strategy for Lincolnshire.”

Fergus sighs. “Well, I’m never going to sell that fucking cottage, am I? Another weekend twatting about with the guttering, and it’s still a fucking mess.”

“Come off it,” Adam says. “You love that place. Must be the neighbours with their webbed feet and twenty seven fingers; bet you feel right at home.”

“Fuck off, that’s Norfolk.”

Adam shrugs, grinning. “Well, you’d fit right in there, too.”

Fergus weighs up, while Adam shovels chips into his mouth, mentioning the phone call from Rick. It’s been scrolling through his mind the whole time Adam’s been here - while he was making the tea, while he was doling out the chips onto plates - but the unpredictability of Adam’s response frightens him. If Adam simply congratulates him and wishes him well, Fergus is aware that there’s a small part of himself that might shrivel up and die.

“Leticia Campbell’s had another stroke,” he says, in the end.

“Shit,” Adam says, frowning. “She alright?”

Fergus shrugs. “She’s in the Norfolk, hasn’t come round yet. Carole didn’t sound optimistic.”

“Jennifer with her?”

“Must be. The appeal meeting was supposed to be on Tuesday; I’ll probably still go up. Dominic’ll have the ECHR paperwork in order, but Jennifer could do with the support. I’ll tell IPRR to push the environment meeting back til Thursday.”

Adam puts down his fork and studies him silently for a moment.

“What?” Fergus demands.

Adam shakes his head minutely, a deep frown etched between his brows. “Nothing.”

“Oh, fuck off, you’re dying to say something.”

“I’m not - I’m just wondering when all this is going to stop.”

“What?”

“Ferg, I’m not saying your heart’s not in the right place, but you’re driving yourself mad with all of it.”

“With what? I’m barely fucking doing anything.”

“You’re not her MP, Fergus. You’re not a solicitor. What can you do for her, at this point? The right people are working on it.“

Fergus stares at him flatly for a moment. “That last surgery, when Jennifer fucking wheeled her in and she came to thank me, I hadn’t fucking done anything, had I? Three years she’d been coming to see me about not being allowed to live in her own fucking country, and what did I do? Hand her off to fucking Stephen, ask a couple of polite questions. Fucking hell, I might as well have put her on a fucking plane.”

“That’s mental,” Adam says. “That’s such complete bullshit. You did a damn sight more than fucking Mannion would have done.”

“That’s not something that deserves a fucking medal, is it? ‘Fergus Williams, slightly less useless and racist than Peter fucking Mannion.’”

“Oh, fuck off, you know what I mean.”

“Bollocks. I could have done more, and you fucking know it.”

“Look, Ferg. I wasn’t going to say anything, but do you not think that this is all building on a lot of the stuff with your mum -”

“What the fuck has that got to do with anything?”

“Fuck’s sake. I know you think Mrs Campbell’s a nice old lady. I know why you’re doing the whole bleeding heart routine, trying to win this one. I get why you think it’s important.”

“It is fucking important. Don’t try the fucking Freudian bullshit with me, you twat.”

“You’re halfway to a fucking breakdown -"

“What the fuck are you -”

“Because - this! This fucking vendetta against Mary fucking Drake! All these trips to Norwich - to do what? Hold Jennifer’s hand while you fail to help the solicitor stop her mum being put on a fucking plane to Trinidad?”

“Fuck off, Adam.”

“Fergus,” Adam says, and then he hesitates, and Fergus despises him so very precisely in that moment that he has to turn away, because Adam is reaching out a hand to him, the way he used to when he hustled Fergus into a seat beside him on the train, or held a door open for him like Fergus was his fucking girlfriend. It’s familiar and solicitous and tender and it makes Fergus’ blood boil. “I’m worried about you, you stupid twat.”

“Well, don’t be,” Fergus says shortly. “Don’t fucking come round here, just because it’s not all sunbeams and rainbows at Victoria Street, and pick a fucking fight.”

“I wasn’t,” Adam says, holding up his hands placatingly. “I promise.”

Silence hangs between them while Fergus stabs another few soggy chips with his fork.

“Listen,” Adam says, in the end, “I’ll drop it. Just - think about it, yeah? About taking a holiday, or something.”

“All I’ve fucking done for the past twelve months is fuck about in that fucking cottage. Any more holidays and I’ll completely lose the will to fucking live.”

Adam sticks to his word and lets the subject drop, and Fergus allows himself to be cajoled into opening a bottle of wine. Later, when Adam breathes mid-range pinot noir through slightly purple lips and sticks his tongue down Fergus’ throat, he propels Fergus backwards into the sofa cushions and sucks him off with drunken enthusiasm.

There isn’t a kiss, when Adam excuses himself at ten to midnight and escapes into an Uber; there rarely is on nights like these. Usually, it’s reserved for the dark, secretive hours of the early morning, after one of Adam’s longer-lived moments of weakness, when he thinks Fergus is still asleep and slips out between the covers like a cat burglar. Admittedly, he’s been forgetting himself more often recently, sometimes brushing Fergus’ cheek with absent-minded affection on his way past in the hall, edging over the boundaries Fergus has constructed between them with an easy, casual disregard. All the while, Fergus knows that if he tried to knock down the wall between them altogether, Adam would jump right back over it and sprint in the other direction. He expects Fergus to make do with these occasional trespasses, and it’s slowly, surely driving Fergus stark-raving mad.

Late the next morning, with a train ticket to Norwich booked, the remains of the greasy fish and chips scraped into the bin, and a cup of terrible, instant coffee half-drunk in the patch of sunlight on the kitchen table, Fergus presses his phone to his ear.

“Fergus,” Rick says when he answers, sounding rather more pleased to hear from him than anyone else has of late.

“I’m in,” Fergus replies, stomach churning. “When did you want to set up the interview?”


	14. Chapter 14

The twenty third of June looms from the calendar on the side of the kitchen cupboard every time Fergus stands at the sink making a cup of tea. While he waits for the kettle to boil, he stares at it helplessly, the weight and significance of the date bearing down on him in the silence of his otherwise empty house. Contact with Adam has been limited, for the last three weeks, to texts about polls and snatched phone calls in which Adam apologises for cancelling arrangements without ever actually uttering an apology, and the cumulative effect is that Fergus is suffering flashbacks to those last few miserable weeks living out of a hotel room in Norwich, with Adam a distant, inscrutable shadow, always out of reach.

On the day of the referendum, he spends an hour at the Wallingford Arms with members of the team from the IPRR, watching David Dimbleby fail to say anything of consequence about an indication of the result, and then takes a taxi home and sets himself up in front of BBC One with a pot of coffee and one eye on his phone. It lights up with a series of texts from the old uni crowd, which Fergus ignores. For the past two months, all he’s done is endure pointless, speculative meeting after pointless, speculative meeting about the impact of the possible referendum result on environmental policy; the idea that in a matter of hours they’ll know the outcome for certain is almost a relief. It’s almost like the old days of watching the by election results come in, except Adam isn’t hunched in the armchair with his feet on the coffee table swearing at Jeremy Vine, and Fergus is cold and miserable and regretting the decision not to get blind drunk and wait til the morning to find out which way the vote has gone.

At twenty to five, by which time Fergus is exhausted and half-asleep, David Dimbleby grimly announces that there is no way the Remain vote can come out on top. The lunatics have done it; Tucker and Nicholson and Reeder and Dan fucking Miller and their army of PR consultants have failed. Fergus, who never bothered to genuinely consider that concern for economic stability and sheer bloody common sense wouldn’t prevail, is too shocked to know what to do, beyond stagger off to bed and hope the whole thing turns out to be a terrible dream when he surfaces later in the day. He calls Adam’s phone just before he staggers upstairs, but it’s engaged, so he crawls under the covers and attempts to put grappling with the consequences of this stupid fucking cock-up out of mind for long enough to grab a couple of hours of sleep.

It’s three o’clock that afternoon, when Adam finally makes contact. For long moments after Fergus picks up the phone, there is simply silence, as though neither of them quite knows what to say. In the end, Adam mutters, “I’m round the corner from yours, are you in?”

Fergus puts the kettle on, shoves the bottle of decent vodka into the freezer just in case, and stumbles down the hall to open the front door, just as Adam is unfolding himself from the back of a black cab at the kerbside.

“Fucking hell,” Fergus murmurs, as Adam pushes open the gate and lurches up the garden path. “Have you slept?”

“Not since yesterday. Not since the twenty second, actually,” Adam clarifies, scrubbing a hand over his face.

Fergus ushers him inside and into the living room, where Adam collapses onto the sofa like a puppet with the strings cut. “Tea or booze?”

Adam grimaces. “Still got that fucking radioactive absinthe from years ago?”

“Somewhere, but offing yourself’s a touch melodramatic.”

“Tea, then.”

Fergus retreats and makes the tea, fumbling in the cupboard for biscuits and coming up short of anything other than a couple of out-of-date Penguins and a few packets of salt and vinegar crisps. Outside, it’s a gloriously sunny day, which seems cruel and unfair. Fergus had expected pathetic fallacy: storms and blizzards and horses eating each other until the natural order of things was restored.

When he returns to the living room, Adam is hunched over his knees on the sofa, his head in his hands, and Fergus thinks, for one absolutely horrifying moment, that he might be crying. Then he glances up, bleary-eyed with nothing more than extreme fatigue, and Fergus shoves the tea and crisps at him, relieved.

“Go on, bet you haven’t eaten.”

“Had a sandwich,” Adam mutters. He squints at the crisps and grimaces. “Is this all career suicide and national fucking ruin gets me, these days? A packet of salt and vinegar and a cup of fucking Earl Grey.”

“Terribly fucking sorry,” Fergus snaps. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a fucking cake.”

Adam fails to rise to the bait, which Fergus finds mildly concerning, and knocks back a long mouthful of tea, even though it’s far too hot to drink.

“I fucking told them,” he mutters, grimly, after a moment, wincing. “I told them, it isn’t just about fucking - fucking immigrants and people being fucking racist. We’ve spent months fucking sneering at the North, at the fucking Fens, and look where it’s got us - ninety per cent of those stupid bastards just wanted to take something back - they didn’t fucking know _what_ , or how it’s going to make anything better, they just fucking knew they wanted it, and we should have fucking listened. _Sovereignty_ , make Britain fucking Great again - Jesus fucking Christ -”

Fergus is aware that he is hovering, uselessly. Two months ago Adam had pulled him into a hug as though it were the simplest thing in the world. He sits down heavily in the armchair, instead.

“Where’s Miller?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Adam sighs, rubbing a hand across his eyes. “Last I saw, he was promising Laura Kuenssberg he won’t try and push for a second vote.”

“Meanwhile, Tucker’s already rallying the forces of darkness?”

Adam gives an exhausted nod. Fergus watches him carefully, before asking, “What are you going to do?”

Adam meets his eyes, and Fergus recognises something familiar in his expression. It’s the same look he’d worn a year and a half ago in Fergus’ kitchen, preparing to close the distance between them with a move neither of them would have been able to dismiss as a symptom of the drink or the coke or the loneliness.

“Yeah,” Adam says, mouth turned down in determination. “About that. It’s why I’m here, actually.”

Fergus is seized by the knowledge that he absolutely cannot let whatever is about to fall out of Adam’s mouth see the light of day. Whatever it is, it’ll be monumental, and it’ll change things. Fergus has wanted to change things, for months, but if Adam opens his mouth now to tell him they’re done, once and for all, then for the rest of his life Fergus will have to think about this moment every time anyone brings up the subject of Brexit, and the thought of that is just too awful to bear. Fuck Adam for doing this now.

“I’ve got a job,” he says quickly. “In New York.”

Adam’s mouth hangs open, the tea forgotten in his left hand, dangerously close to overflowing one side of the mug. “What?”

“Rick - I used to work with him at nPower - offered me a job with a lobbying group. Environmental stuff, mostly.”

“In New York?”

“Well, it was that or carry on rotting in fucking Camberwell.”

Adam stares at him as though he’s having trouble understanding English. “When the fuck did this happen?”

“Rick got in touch, and I thought, why not see what the job entailed, and it looks good. It looks interesting.”

“Lobbying?”

“Some work with energy companies on the West Coast, but I’d mainly be in New York, Washington, trying to push environmental policy with Congress.”

The tea finally spills over the edge of the mug and Adam swears, leaning forward to deposit it on the coffee table while he shakes his scalded hand. “How fucking long have you been planning this?”

Fergus looks away. “Well, I don’t know why you’re being a twat about it, we haven’t been -”

“How long?”

“They offered it to me just after Mum died.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Adam gets to his feet and stalks over to the window, where the street is visible in sunny stripes through the blind.

“Well, I hadn’t made my mind up. I didn’t want to - Look, it doesn’t matter when it was.”

“Apparently.”

“Don’t be all - like this about it.”

“Like what? You’re a cool fucking operator, I’ll give you that. MI5 are missing a trick, maybe you should have asked them to give you a fucking job.”

“Oh, fuck off. You’ve no idea what it’s been like, wondering whether I should tell you -”

“ _Whether_?”

“You know what I mean.”

Adam appears to be weighing his next words carefully, and when he delivers them, it’s with a coolness that makes the pit of Fergus’ stomach churn. “What are you planning to do with the house?”

Fergus shrugs. “Renting it out. The estate agent’s going to manage it for me.”

“Fucking hell,” says Adam. “You really are a spineless fucking bastard, aren’t you.”

Fergus is on his feet without really meaning to be. “You’re one to fucking talk,” he snaps, before he can reconsider.

Adam spins to face him wearing a furious, vicious expression. “What the _fuck_ does that mean?”

“You nearly had a fucking stroke when I asked you to move in, never mind the fact that you were already practically fucking living here - clearly the mere suggestion of an actual functional relationship was so abhorrent -”

“Says the man so paralysed by his own self-loathing he’s still in the fucking closet at the age of forty three - ”

“Fuck off, Adam, you’re hardly up on the roof belting out ‘I Am What I Am’.”

“Yeah,” Adam says. “Of course. I’m the coward. Fuck off, Fergus.”

In three strides, Adam is out of the living room and marching for the front door. Fergus follows him, helplessly. Adam wrenches the door open and Fergus calls after him, cringing at the thought of the neighbours witnessing this, spiteful Mrs Morrison from number 21 watching this embarrassing spectacle from behind her net curtains and rubbing her wizened hands together with glee.

Adam pauses and turns to look at him and Fergus hesitates. He wonders, later, whether if he’d known it might be the last thing he’d ever say to Adam, he would have tried to stop it from falling out of his mouth the way it does.

“I’ll need my key back; they can’t rent it out, if you’ve still got one.”

Adam wordlessly reaches into his pocket and extracts his keys. Fergus watches him twist one off the fob and holds out his hand to accept it, and then Adam is gone.

**Camberwell, London, 2019** ****

The ‘For Sale’ sign has finally gone up, nailed to the front gate by a surly youth in a suit who had claimed to be from the estate agents. Catching sight of it out of the living room window is the low point of Fergus’ day, because it looks so ugly, not-quite-perpendicular beside the wheelie bins, and because it makes avoiding thoughts of his impending return to New York impossible. Fergus is a veteran of running away from his problems; he knows what the tight, panicky feeling in his chest when he thinks about abandoning his Sainsbury’s Home set of crockery for one means, and he knows how to push through it. Dean, the surly youth’s superior, assures him there’s already been a lot of interest.

It’s February: five months since he fled the States. He’d expected Richard to be thrilled when he rang to let him know the house was finally on the market, but there’d been a cautious reticence to Richard’s congratulations, as though he was having trouble believing that Fergus actually meant it. Fergus has no right to complain; Richard’s been so patient throughout this whole, ridiculous process. Standing at the kitchen sink, throwing back the last dregs of a cold cup of coffee, Fergus reflects that Richard’s patience is probably one of the things he finds most infuriating about him, because it perpetually paints Fergus as the bad guy.

The sun is creeping over the garden wall, casting long-fingered shadows from next door’s new extension. The fig tree is gone; they moved in some time during Fergus’ absence, and from the upstairs window he can see that they’ve taken out all the plants and installed a minuscule square of astro-turf lawn and a set of appalling waterproof lounge furniture. On the wall, a fat pigeon is casting a greedy eye towards the bird-feeder in the opposite neighbours’ garden. Fergus misses Arthur, who would’ve scrambled up to chase it off.

There’s no time for lurking in the kitchen glowering at the wildlife. Fergus has the final consultancy meeting with the Greens, this afternoon, and he’s set up a video-conference with the Congressional Green New Deal team. First, he has a round of awkward goodbyes to make: the New Economics lot won’t be sorry to see the back of him, and the feeling is more than mutual, but they’re insisting he undergoes an exit interview.

He’s contemplating the misery of enduring fifteen minutes of insincere, lacklustre handshakes and best wishes for the future from the folding-bike riding arseholes at Salamanca Place when the doorbell rings, startling him into dropping the mug into the sink. It clips the side of the ceramic basin and shatters into pieces with a crack.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters, surveying the wreckage. The doorbell rings a second time.

Abandoning the sink, he hurries for the door, vowing vengeance on whichever fucker has had the temerity to disturb his morning sulk. There have already been two opportunists who’ve grinned sheepishly on the doorstep and said they were passing and saw the ‘For Sale’ sign and wondered if they might have a look around. Fergus had blinked at their audacity and sent them on their way by mumbling about the upcoming open house; this time, he’s not feeling quite so inclined to minding his manners.

He flings open the door, a diatribe about courtesy and estate agents existing for a reason on the tip of his tongue, and stops in his tracks.

Adam frowns at him, hands shoved in the pockets of his expensive-looking jeans. He’s definitely thinner than Fergus remembers, leaner, like he’s taken up running in a more committed fashion, and the photo in the paper hadn’t revealed the deepening map of creases at the corners of his eyes. Still, he looks good. His fashionable haircut suits him, the fucker, and the jacket and scarf combination makes him look like a model from a menswear catalogue.

“Lovely to see you, too,” he says, while Fergus flounders on the doorstep. “Can I come in, or what?”


	15. Chapter 15

**Sagres, Portugal, 2019**

The hotel is perfect. High on the cliffs and overlooking a brooding sea, it’s all whitewashed walls and dark wood and charming, painted tiles. It’s exactly what Fergus had imagined, when he’d scrolled through the reviews online. It’s been four days of unbroken views and peace and quiet and blessed isolation, and everything promised by a pousada at the edge of the Atlantic coast in low season.

The holiday is Fergus’ reward. He’s made a number of decisions in the last eight weeks and so far, he isn’t regretting any of them. The first, and easiest choice had been taking the house off the market. All it had really taken was Adam’s wistful expression when he’d shuffled into the living room and caught sight of the beer garden table through the window, and Fergus had already been on the phone to the estate agent in his mind, demanding they come and remove their horrible cardboard sign from his front garden.

Fergus had wondered, briefly, whether he might be bored, out here at the arse-end of the Algarve in April. And he is: between long walks on the cliffs and long walks into the National Park in the direction of Cape St Vincent, and long hours reading a novel about World War Two code-breakers on the chilly balcony adjoining his room, he’s bored shitless. It’s absolutely perfect.

This morning, he decided to take himself off on another walk along the cliffs in the direction of the Fortaleza. It’s on a barren, windswept finger of land sticking out into the sea, where the Algarve meets the Atlantic, once the sight of Henry the Navigator’s school, where caravels set out for the New World and men first plotted the theft of a million Africans. It’s a place of restless, cruel majesty, and Fergus has taken to stomping around the circumference of the great compass rose to gaze out over the ocean, imagining himself tiny and insignificant in the great, unrelenting scheme of things.

At the foot of the cliffs, the sea is a violent, turbulent grey. It looks dangerous; like, if Fergus jumped from the rocks, it would dash him against them and then swallow him. It’s almost the most Westerly point in Europe. Beneath him there is only the Atlantic, stretching unbroken towards the horizon on a dizzying scale. On the other side of the ocean, Richard is getting on with life perfectly well without him, Fergus imagines. It had taken a week for him to summon the courage to break the news about his deciding not to fly back to New York for at least another month, and Richard saying, in a tired, gentle voice, that Fergus shouldn’t feel obligated to come back at all, on his account. By now, he’ll be going to more boring dinner parties with his academic friends and finding other nervous, closeted men at political fundraisers to take to dinner at Scalini Fedeli.

There are many things Fergus regrets about the past three years - not being at Leticia Campbell’s funeral, for one; he’d sent flowers, and there’ll have been a huge turnout in any case, but he ought to have been there - but standing here, high on the cliffs above the sea, he’s made his peace with a lot of them, and there are remarkably few things he would actually change.

When Adam turned up on the doorstep, that day in February, he’d hung in the liminal space between the front step and the hall as though he still expected Fergus to slam the door in his face.

“I’m on my way to work,” Fergus had warned, standing back to let him inside.

Adam had crossed the threshold, hunched around the shoulders as though stepping back into the house oppressed him in some way. Fergus wondered whether he was thinking that it still smelled like a fucking headshop.

“You didn’t reply to any of the messages about the book.”

Adam was far too close in the dim light at the foot of the stairs. Fergus turned his back and headed for the kitchen, changing his mind at the last moment and veering into the living room, where Adam wouldn’t see the broken coffee mug and the mundane, intimate evidence of Fergus’ quiet, solitary morning. “I told you to publish whatever you wanted.”

Adam paused in the doorway. “It’d already gone to print, by then.”

“Why fucking ask, then?”

Adam shrugged minutely. “Angela said she’d chased you about the immigration story. I hadn’t realised you were back.”

“Only while I sell the house. Thanks for that, by the way - a week of the fucking BBC hassling me for a comment.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re fucking not.” Fergus realised his hands were clenched on his hips at the same time as Adam gave him a brief, furtive once-over, his gaze returning to hover shamelessly on Fergus’ burning face, as though he had the right to stroll in and make eyes at him, after nearly three years of silence. “Why the fuck are you here, Adam?”

“Mark said you were going back to New York.”

Fucking Mark. Fucking Mark and the pity in his expression when he got Fergus to spill the beans about he and Adam over dinner last month.

“I didn’t realise you were selling this place,” Adam continued. “How long are you going for?”

Fergus held Adam’s eye, despite the tremor of uncertainty that was quivering somewhere in his chest. “For good, probably. The environmental lobby thing’s picking up steam, and I’ve got a flat in New York -”

“What if I asked you not to?”

Adam looked as though he would very much like the ground to swallow him, but he stood firm in the doorway of Fergus’ living room, waiting for an answer.

Fergus stared at him. “Adam - ”

“I’m just asking, would it make a difference?”

There ought to have been a thousand good arguments for saying _no_ , emphatically and unequivocally, but Fergus was momentarily unable to articulate most of them. “Adam, I’m seeing someone -”

Adam nodded, as though it was somehow what he’d expected. He glanced away for a moment, his eyes sliding to the sliver of kitchen window visible through the open door. “Can we just fucking talk, then?” he said, eventually. “It’s been three years, Fergus.”

Fergus wanted to say, _And whose fucking fault is that?_ but the ensuing argument would invariably have ended badly for both of them. “I’ve got to go to work.”

Adam’s expression closed and he nodded again. “Right. Okay.”

“I’m having leaving drinks with a couple of people from the Greens,” Fergus said, before he could think better of it, because Adam looked as though he was about to go outside and kick one of the wheelie bins to death. “You can see us there, if you like. I’ll text you where and when.”

Adam’s frown began to lift incrementally. “Have you still got my number?”

“Course I have,” Fergus said, because it was damning and entirely true that he hadn’t been able to face deleting Adam as a contact, even in the aftermath of his escape to New York. “Look, I’ve got to go, or I’ll miss this fucking meeting.”

Adam had allowed himself to be shepherded out onto the front step and then paused to look up at him.

“Don’t sell the house.”

Fergus stared at him. “I’ve got to,” he argued. “I’m moving back next month.”

“Don’t.”

Fergus had closed the door behind him and known, already, that any chance of him getting on a plane in three weeks’ time had begun to collapse, his resolve washing away like the sandcastles he used to build at Southwold, as soon as the tide crept in.

The book about the code-breakers takes a day and a half to read. It’s years since Fergus whipped through a novel so quickly and enjoyed the experience so thoroughly. He takes the book, which he’d bought in the W.H. Smiths at Gatwick, down to the hotel’s deserted lounge and peruses the other dog-eared paperbacks left there by previous travellers. There’s an overabundance of Kathy Reichs and Jeffrey Archer, a collection of books with pastel covers about a shopaholic, and a dog-eared copy of _The Secret History_ , which Fergus has already read, but supposes he might as well read again.

He leaves behind the novel about the code-breakers and returns to his room, intending to read for an hour or so until he can slope down to the dining room and eat an unnecessarily large lunch. He’s about to open the sliding doors to the balcony, when his phone, charging on the bedside table, vibrates.

It’s Adam, asking: _Bored yet?_

Fergus stares at the message for a moment, unsure how to communicate to Adam the immense, pleasurable freedom of having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do, and the strange, bleak joy he’s felt looking out over the Atlantic and letting four years of confusion and misery lift from his shoulders.

They haven’t slept together yet. The yet might be presumptuous. Adam hasn’t done much to indicate that the tenuous friendship they’ve reclaimed over the past two months is anything more than that, and Fergus is very fucking grateful, because he’s had enough to deal with, without being hurled back into the tumult of constantly picking over the evidence of what he means to Adam and vice-versa. It’s just that he knows, now, what he wants he and Adam to be, eventually, and he suspects - he hopes - that Adam might want it, too.

The day before Fergus flew to Faro, Adam invited him to lunch in town. He was in London for a meeting with his editor, the kind of meeting he was beginning to dread, because there was growing pressure for him to talk about a second book, and solid ideas for a second book were proving elusive.

Fergus arrived looking uptight and belligerent, incongruous in his man-of-leisure jeans-and-jumper combination, and Adam’s heart lurched at the sight of him, so damningly fond of this version of Fergus that fucked about doing the odd spot of consultancy work and spent the rest of his time teaching himself to bake bread, or reading long-winded research papers about renewable energy, or whatever it was he found to occupy his time. Fergus looked like the kind of man who was considering buying a dog. The fact he caught sight of Adam across the pub and a smile unfurled across his face, probably without him meaning it to, sealed the deal: Adam was done for, always had been.

“Got you this,” Adam said, sliding a sparkling water across the table towards him as he sat down.

Fergus pulled a face, even as he took a sip. “What about a proper drink?”

“Some of us have work to get back to.”

“So have I,” Fergus protested. “Video call with Rachel Fawcett - you know, the Green New Deal stuff. Have you ordered food?”

An hour and a half later, once Fergus had persuaded him to ring the _Telegraph_ to say he’d have to do the interview over the phone later that afternoon and ordered them a bottle of sauvignon blanc, Adam wondered why he was still being so fucking careful about things. Fergus, quite obviously, wouldn’t have put up much of a fuss, if he’d slid a hand under the table and suggested he sack off the meeting with the Greens in favour of spending the afternoon in bed.

“I’ve stopped the coke,” he said, surprising himself, during a lull in the conversation. Most of the rest of the lunch crowd had gone back to their offices, and the atmosphere in the pub was subdued, as though the post-prandial torpor Adam was experiencing thanks to the chips and the wine had slid over everybody else’s afternoon.

Fergus glanced at him sharply, fingers pausing in their dance around the stem of his glass. “Not because of -”

Adam shook his head. “Had a shit time, a couple of years ago. It’d been cut with something, I spent the night wondering whether to call an ambulance, convinced I was going to die. Decided I didn’t want to do it again. It’s been eighteen months.”

“You don’t have to go to fucking confession,” Fergus murmured, frowning at him.

“I know, you twat. I’m just saying, things have changed.” Adam rolled his eyes at himself. He watched Fergus’ fingers on the wine glass. “I needed to get all of my fucking ducks in a row, alright?”

“Ducks.”

“Yes, fuck off.”

“And you’ve done that, now, have you?”

“I’d done most of it three years ago, but you announced you were fucking off to the States.”

It was the closest they’d got to discussing the state of things between them, and the dangerous territory of Fergus’ bombshell in the aftermath of the referendum result.

Of course, if Malcolm fucking Tucker hadn’t strolled his way into DoSAC, that miserable late night in February 2015, before Fergus got the sack, before Adam cocked everything up by trying to have boundaries and failing to stick to them, it’s quite possible that neither of them would even have been in this fucking mess to begin with.

Malcolm had appeared round the corner by the photocopiers like a shark in a Berghaus fleece, made a beeline for Adam, where he was hunched over his laptop in Fergus’ office, and fixed him with a grin that spoke of subterfuge and late night conspiracies.

“One half of the yellow peril,” he’d said in greeting, while Adam took the time to wonder how he’d got past the security desk. “Where’s the monkey, eh? Gone to fetch the organ grinder a coffee?”

Adam had sat back in his swivel chair and taken in Tucker’s hair, now almost entirely silver, and the visitor’s pass around his neck. “Malcolm. An unexpected pleasure. Who let you in?”

“Oh, don’t you worry your head about that. I’m here in an unofficial, official capacity.”

“Miller knows you’re here, then?”

Tucker had smiled that predatory smile and settled himself into one of the armchairs in the breakout space. “Worry less about who sent me, and more about why I’ve come.”

Adam had sighed and saved the document he’d been working on. It had been an extremely long day, and while he’d known that Tucker had been brought back into the Opposition fold in some capacity, following his incarceration and subsequent quiet six months out of the public eye, he hadn’t expected to have to deal with him here, on home ground, or that he and Fergus would fall under his scrutiny.

“Come on, Malcolm. Shall we not? The children have gone home for the day, so you can dispense with the _sturm und drang_ and just get to the fucking point.”

“Right, right, fuck the foreplay, eh?” Tucker sat forward and steepled his fingers portentously. “You’re going to lose this fucking election, you and your little Thunderbird friend, and so’s Dan fucking Miller. JB’s made his fucking pledge about a referendum, so, the question becomes, what do we do next, those of us with an interest in stopping this country from fucking itself up the shitter with the ephemeral notion of sovereignty?”

Tucker’s chat up lines - “You got that fucking used condom into office by making him out to be more than the spunk receptacle that he is; I’ve a use for bullshitters of your calibre,” - had not been improved by his sojourn in HMP Ford, but Adam had been flattered, and Tucker hadn’t been entirely wrong about Fergus’ prospects.

Quite who had let Tucker into DoSAC in the first place had remained a mystery, until Adam had attended the first meeting of the pro-EU get-out-the-vote cheerleading squad and found himself across the table from Angela Cartwright. They’d had a disgusting, earnest conversation about the referendum being more important than party loyalty and practically held hands as they sold themselves to Tucker and the rest of the fucking Labour Remain hit squad. No one had been more surprised than Adam to discover the existence of a conscience, deep in the recesses of his soul.

He wished he could say all this to Fergus. That he’d found every second of working with Ollie fucking Reeder so soul-scouringly repulsive that he’d tried to keep Fergus at arm’s length from it. Fergus had been dealing with his mum, and losing the fucking plot about Mary Drake and Leticia Campbell’s sodding immigration case, and Adam had wanted, selfishly, to have him to himself, separate from all of the rest of the bullshit that was slowly and surely consuming his life.

He’d spent months, failing to stick to his own rules where Fergus was concerned, thinking about that fucking cottage Fergus was always disappearing off to. He’d been wanting to tell Fergus to forget about selling it. He’d been thinking about saying: “I’ll sell the flat, you sell the house in Camberwell, let’s go and live by the fucking sea.” It might as well have been a proposal, and he’d crawled round to Fergus’ in the aftermath of the disastrous referendum result with every intention of making it, until Fergus had let slip about his well-formulated plan to get as far away from Adam as humanly possible and then fucked off to New York.

“D’you want another drink?” Fergus asked, having knocked back the last of his wine.

Adam stared at him for a moment. He’d been lost in imagining what Fergus would have said, if he’d been around for Adam’s departure from People’s Vote, after Reeder had unveiled the full extent of his plans to stab yet another of his party’s leaders in the back, and Adam had realised quite what he’d sacrificed for this pretence of a career.

“Glenn was too kind, wasn’t he?” he’d said, while Reeder huffed and squirmed. “You’re not a worm, you’re an amoeba. No spine, no guts, just a pathetic collection of cells.”

“Fuck, no,” he said, offering Fergus a smile over his wine glass. “Still got to charm those dickheads from the _Telegraph_.”

Fergus came to Portugal because he’d had no fucking clue where else to go. He’d googled ‘isolated hotels’ and then realised he didn’t want to have to drive more than a couple of hours from the nearest airport.

He’s spent the afternoon watching the surfers on Praia do Tonel. There are signs up for a surf school, but not enough tourists, and these surfers seem to be well-practiced, slicing through the waves with an ease that Fergus envies, because he envies anyone who finds this sort of thing easy. His interactions with sport - be they the charged, agonising squash matches with Adam, or the self-conscious times he’s braved a gym - have left him convinced of the wisdom of leaving such things to people who know what they’re doing.

The surf is thunderous today, and the sun warm; he’s pushed up his sleeves and propped himself up against a rock to read, but he keeps getting distracted by watching the young men leaping in and out of the waves with their surfboards. All in all, he’s having a lovely time.

He’s been hesitating about replying to Adam’s text, but he fishes his phone out of his pocket and types: _The only thing that would make it better is if you were here._ A moment later, in a fit of madness, he follows it up with: _Wish you were._

Adam reads it almost as soon as it’s sent, and Fergus tries not to panic when three dots appear and disappear a couple of times in quick succession. In the end, he shoves the phone back in his pocket and applies himself to another chapter of Donna Tartt.

It’s nearly four o’clock when his phone vibrates in his pocket, and the surfers are packing up for the day, hauling their boards out of the water and heading towards the steps with towels slung over their shoulders.

Adam has replied: _Wish I were too._ Then, a second later: _What do we do about it?_

Fergus thinks about it. He thinks about returning home to his tiny, tangerine-coloured kitchen, and about Adam being there to greet him.

 _Give me three days,_ he types. _Can you pick me up at Gatwick?_

There’s another, much shorter pause and then Adam replies: _Ok, can do that x_

It’s the kiss that does it, because Adam has never, to Fergus’ knowledge, ended a text message with a kiss before in his life. Fergus is furious and giddy and petrified. He follows the surfers off the beach and heads for one of the few bars open this early in the season, in need of a drink.

Adam is waiting for him just outside customs, hanging back from the gaggle of relatives and taxi drivers holding signs, with a smirk on his face. Fergus stumbles towards him, dragging his suitcase, and Adam doesn’t move, the bastard, until he’s standing right in front of him.

“Flight alright?”

Fergus scowls in the face of his good humour. Adam makes no attempt to hug him. “A fucking dream.”

“I’m in short stay,” Adam says briskly, reaching out a hand for Fergus’ case.

“I’ve got it,” Fergus snaps, and they set off in the direction of the carpark.

Adam owns a car, now. It’s one of the many things Fergus has struggled with, since Adam strolled back into his life. Adam owns an obnoxious Alfa-Romeo, a sports model with leather seats, bought with the advance from his book deal. It’s bright red and convertible and it isn’t even a hybrid. Fergus had ripped him to shreds for it, the first time he’d stepped out of it onto the kerb in Camberwell, but secretly also wishes Adam would let him fuck him on the smooth leather of the back seat. Imagining it has Fergus’ face aflame, as Adam hefts his case into the boot, but Adam fails to comment and climbs into the driver’s seat without throwing him a second glance.

Fergus is on edge the entire way back to Camberwell. Adam asks him inoffensive questions about the hotel and the food and the beaches, and Fergus is aware he’s being an arsehole, snapping and biting when Adam’s just trying to be fucking pleasant, it’s just that he’s spent three days trying not to think too hard about what might happen when they were finally face-to-face again, and Adam’s acting like their entire conversation via text never happened.

By the time they pull up to the curb outside the garden gate, Fergus is resigned to his fate. Adam has had the benefit of seventy two hours in which to reconsider, and he’s letting Fergus down gently.

Adam insists on lifting his case out of the boot again, and finally snaps, “I’m not being fucking polite, I don’t want you scratching the paintwork,” when Fergus tries to tell him to fuck off.

By the time he’s across the threshold, Fergus is hoping Adam will fuck off back to his flat and leave him to lick his wounds in peace; his wounded pride can handle the rejection, but not if Adam follows him inside and insists on their drinking a polite, platonic cup of tea.

He’s about to turn and give Adam an excuse to escape by complaining about being knackered from the flight, when Adam manhandles him roughly through the front door and kicks it shut behind him.

Fergus swallows a cry of surprise and throws up a hand to grasp at the back of Adam’s jacket when Adam kisses him. He shoves a cold hand under Fergus’ shirt, tugging him closer by the belt loops of his jeans. “Fucking hell,” he gasps. “That was the longest drive of my fucking life.”

“Adam,” Fergus protests, getting a hand between them. He’d thought, at the very least, there’d be an element of conversation involved, if Adam had, in fact, decided to make good on the promise of their last communication. “Where the fuck has this come from?”

“How about the entire last twenty four years, you twat,” Adam says, raising an eyebrow, sounding like he’d rather stab himself in the eyeball with a fork than be making any admission of need. “You said to pick you up, I thought -”

“Adam, just - get off me for a minute.” Adam lifts his hands as though he’s been burned. “Not like that, you idiot. I just - I need to fucking sit down.”

Fergus heads for the kitchen and goes for the kettle, letting the tap run for a few seconds before filling it and setting it to boil, suddenly in need of tea, after all. Adam follows him and plonks himself at the kitchen table, like he belongs there. Fergus deposits a mug in front of him and clasps his hands around his own, wishing he’d thought to set the heating to come on in advance of his return home.

Adam is staring at him as though he’s out of his mind. Fergus supposes he is. All he’s wanted, since he set eyes on Adam in that shitty pub off Charing Cross Road in 1995, is to get his hands underneath Adam’s clothes, and now he’s fobbing him off with tea and insisting they talk about Adam’s desire to fuck him up against his closed front door, instead of letting him get on with it.

“I love you,” he says, in the end.

Adam has the audacity to look as though he’s been slapped. He stares at Fergus mutely, panic written into every line of his stupid, beautiful face.

“You said yourself, it’s been twenty four years,” Fergus says. “Hardly a fucking surprise.”

With a sigh, he turns to pour his cup of tea down the sink. There’s a bottle of vodka gathering dust at the back of one of the cupboards. If he downs the contents, perhaps he’ll forget the familiar weight of Adam’s presence in this room; perhaps he’ll be able to sell up, after all, and move somewhere new.

He rubs a hand over his eyes. His clothes carry the dead smell of plane travel. “Can you just go, Adam? Please.”

Behind him, he hears Adam getting to his feet. He braces himself for the sound of retreating footsteps and the slam of the front door.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand lands on his arm and tugs him to turn around. He finds Adam looming over him, the way he’s always managed to, despite the fact they’re nearly of a height. Adam’s eyes are burning, furious, and there’s a miserable, angry twist to his mouth.

“Don’t say that and then tell me to fuck off,” he says, tightly. “I know I’ve been a fucking idiot, Ferg, but you can’t just fucking -”

Fergus kisses him softly, painfully, and Adam makes a gasping noise, as though it tears something out of him to be treated with gentleness. He leans heavily into Fergus’ hands.

Fergus lets himself be manhandled for a while, lets Adam get a hand on his waist and push him up against the sink, lets Adam lick into his mouth and press closer, his fingers claws in Fergus’ rumpled shirt. It’s like that first time four years ago, and also nothing like it at all. Fergus tilts his head and lets Adam suck his bottom lip into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth. He’s still got exactly the same moves; Fergus could cry with how much of a relief it is.

He slips a hand under the back of Adam’s shirt, presses his fingertips into the soft skin above his waistband, pleased when Adam grunts into his mouth. He trails kisses over Fergus’ cheek, presses his face into the warm, damp skin of Fergus’ neck, licks sweat from the hollow of his collarbone.

“Can we take this upstairs?” he murmurs. Fergus shivers and lets him cant their hips together, lets himself be tugged closer by an insistent hand on his arse.

Eventually, Fergus puts his hands on Adam’s shoulders and pushes him away. “You go up,” he says.

Adam looks at him warily, his cheeks flushed and his hair standing on end where Fergus has pushed his fingers through it. Fergus kisses him. “It’s fine. I just need a minute.”

Adam hesitates. He licks into Fergus’ mouth again, twists his fingers in his hair, and then steps away, letting go somewhat regretfully. “Don’t be long, you twat,” he says, with a rueful twist to his lips.

Fergus watches him go. He takes a deep, steadying breath and grabs a glass from the cupboard, filling it with water and drinking it in gulps. Outside in the garden, the decrepit dining table is illuminated by a waxing moon, casting long shadows on the weeds growing between the cracks in the paving stones.

He refills the glass and takes it with him, pausing at the foot of the stairs to unzip his suitcase and retrieve his toothbrush.

On the landing, he leaves the light off. There’s a soft glow coming from the open bedroom door. He ducks into the bathroom and quickly brushes his teeth to get rid of the taste of plane travel and airports, then looks at himself in the mirror and decides there’s nothing to be done about his reflection. Clearly, Adam isn’t bothered that he looks like a deflated balloon version of himself as he was at twenty two. He pulls off his stale shirt and trousers and leaves them in a heap behind the bathroom door.

When he walks into the bedroom, Adam is sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, in the midst of pulling off his socks. He is ridiculously, laughably handsome in the muted glow of the bedside lamp, his broad shoulders pale and dusted with a familiar constellation of freckles. He reaches out and Fergus goes to him, letting himself be drawn into the space between Adam’s thighs. Adam immediately presses his mouth to the soft skin of Fergus’ stomach, presses his face into it, clings to him for a moment, while Fergus’ fingers come up to caress the short hair at the nape of his neck.

“I’ve missed you,” Adam mutters into the skin just above Fergus’ navel. Fergus pushes him backwards with a hand on his shoulder.

In the end, it’s neither as frenzied nor as romantic as Fergus had anticipated.

“You’ve brushed your teeth,” Adam objects, when he kisses him.Fergus licks him open and sucks Adam’s tongue into his mouth to prove how much he doesn’t care that Adam hasn’t. Adam lets himself be pressed into the pillows and Fergus detaches himself from his mouth to pepper kisses down his chest. Adam nearly arches off the mattress when he presses a hand to the front of his jeans, choking Fergus’ name in a tone of stunned surprise.

He’s always loved Adam like this: made boneless and stupid by lust, letting Fergus clamber all over him, his broad hands alighting on Fergus’ skin like he isn’t sure how best to touch him, like Fergus is a wondrous thing, and Adam is afraid to break him in a moment of clumsiness.

“Touch me,” he mutters into Adam’s mouth, and Adam groans, sweeping his hands up Fergus’ bare skin to clutch at him, dragging them into flush alignment. “Wait, wait,” Fergus says, shuffling backwards to tug at Adam’s belt. He pulls it out of its loops and gets the jeans unbuttoned and off Adam’s hips while he arches off the mattress, hauling them and his underwear onto the floor.

“Jesus, Fergus,” Adam says, and Fergus presses him into the mattress and sucks him down slowly.

Adam’s hands fly to Fergus’ shoulders, the back of his head, then clutch at the duvet. Fergus allows himself a small, smug smile when he pulls off, and Adam huffs a laugh when he glances up at him.

“This alright?”

Adam slides warm fingers through his hair, tugging just enough to make him want to arch into it like a cat. He fucking hates this kind of bullshit, usually, but with Adam he’s never been able to keep his mouth shut. Adam smiles at him. “Too early to say.”

Fergus takes it as a challenge. By the time he’s got a knuckle pressed behind Adam’s balls, he’s swearing and writhing and biting off Fergus’ name like he’s too overwhelmed to get the whole two syllables out.

“I’m going to come, if you don’t stop, you bastard,” he gasps, and Fergus swallows around him and keeps swallowing, letting Adam pulse on his tongue until he’s tugging Fergus away with the sweaty fingers twisted in his hair.

Fergus lets himself be hauled up the length of Adam’s body, until his cock is nestled into the sweaty junction of Adam’s hip and Adam is doing his best to lick the taste of himself out of Fergus’ open mouth. They rock together like this until Fergus chokes a desperate noise onto Adam’s tongue and comes all over his stomach, Adam’s hands stroking his back in firm, maddening circles.

“Fuck,” he says, when he’s recovered sufficiently to prop himself on one elbow and survey the mess he’s made of them both.

Adam raises a hand to his hip, as though he can’t stop himself from touching, and presses a thumb gently into the soft, shallow valley between Fergus’ hipbone and the soft swell of his belly. It’s such a painfully tender gesture that Fergus finds himself looking away, blinking rapidly against the onset of emotion.

“I need a shower,” he says.

“Me too,” Adam agrees, with a rueful glance down the length of himself.

They hover around one another as Fergus starts up the shower, as they rinse themselves clean, as Fergus washes his hair. Fergus is glad Adam doesn’t try to articulate it, but there’s a need in both of them to keep the other within arm’s reach. They fall into bed again, once they’ve both brushed their teeth, and it’s long, slow minutes of kissing until Fergus is hard again against his hip. They move slowly against each other, until Fergus gets a couple of spit-slick fingers inside Adam at exactly the right angle and Adam shudders to pieces against him. Fergus follows him, his face pressed silently into the curve of Adam’s freckled shoulder.

Fergus dreams lucidly for the first time in years. He’s standing on the beach at Southwold, and nothing particular is happening, except a seagull is strutting along the pebbles beside him, pausing to tug a chip out of a fallen twist of greasy newspaper. When he looks up at the horizon, there’s someone swimming towards him. He raises his hand against the glare of the sun to see them, but he can’t make out a face. He sits on the warm stones and watches them swim closer and closer, and although he still can’t see their face, he knows it’s alright. They’ll get to him eventually.

When he wakes up, Adam is snoring into his pillow, one arm flung outside the covers, a frown carving a deep crevice between his eyebrows.

There’s a long, slow moment in which Fergus watches the rise and fall of his chest.

He needs to piss, and his back hurts, still unused to the mattress after two blissful years of memory foam and ergonomic design. Carefully, he slides his legs out from under the duvet and leaves Adam sleeping. The moment is too delicate to shatter; he doesn’t want to be the one to destroy it.

He pads down the landing, relieves himself, splashes a handful of cold water on his face. His reflection this morning is wearing a smug, stunned sort of smile. He watches himself in the mirror for a moment, telling himself not to be a twat about things after one night. For once, though, he’s fairly certain there’s no reason not to be a twat about things. Adam had been a bit of a twat, himself, when he’d insisted on falling asleep with his head next to Fergus’ on the same pillow, his hand on Fergus’ hip preventing him from squirming away, and Fergus had let him, foregoing his usual hatred of the sticky heat of shared breath mingling between two bodies. It had been good to watch the tension dissolve in Adam’s features at close range; comfortable, even.

There’s no point pretending he can slip back into bed and go back to sleep; he’s too old and his back too problematic, but Adam could do with another hour.

In the kitchen, he turns on the radio, quietly enough that it won’t reach the bedroom. Radio 3: something by Schubert. Fergus digs around quietly in the cupboard for the nice coffee that he hasn’t opened yet, then sets about boiling the kettle and filling the cafetière.

It’s the wrong morning for Schubert, he realises, while he’s waiting for the coffee to brew. He switches the radio to 6 Music and ‘Breaking into Heaven’ begins to trickle out of the speakers. Movement outside the kitchen window catches his eye. There’s a squirrel on the garden wall. He watches it bound along the top and spring onto the garden table, its tail bobbing behind it like a pennant on a ship’s mast.

There are quiet, bare footsteps on the tiles behind him, and then an arm winds its way across his chest and another around his waist. Adam’s breath warms the side of his face and a bristly kiss is pressed to the skin beneath his ear. “Morning,” he says, his voice rough with sleep.

“Morning,” Fergus says, warmth bursting unexpectedly beneath his sternum. “D’you want coffee?”

“In a minute,” Adam says.

Fergus relaxes against him in increments, and they watch the squirrel for a while, until a black and white cat appears on the garden wall and it bounds away for the sanctuary of next door’s feeder.

“I’ve missed this place,” Adam says, quietly, a moment later. The arms around Fergus tighten briefly, and then he is gone, padding over to peer into the fridge and complain that Fergus should have said they needed to stop at the shops on the way back from the airport.

Last night, they’d stayed awake talking about Adam’s plans for carrying out the research for his new book: Fergus had wanted to say _don’t go to Chile yet_ , or _don’t go to Chile without me_ , or _let’s run away to South America and live there_. Watching Adam smile at him slyly with the sun haloed around his head, he feels sick with the love he’s been storing up for him.

“Let’s go out,” he says, to cover his embarrassment. “You can buy me breakfast, prove I’m not a cheap date.”

“You are, though,” says Adam. He takes Fergus by the hips and steers him against the kitchen cupboards, pulling at the cord of his dressing gown until it falls open and he can insinuate his hands beneath it.

Fergus is forced to concede the point.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had a blast writing this - thanks for the support, comments, etc. <3

> **_Guardian Weekend, 5_** **_th_** **_September 2020_**
> 
> **Q &A: Adam Kenyon**
> 
> Adam Kenyon, 47, was born in Hampshire. After graduating from University College London, he worked on the editorial team at the _Daily Mirror_ under Piers Morgan. In 2003, he moved to the _Daily Mail_ , where he broke the story about the death of scientist Richard Murphy and was instrumental in the campaign against the extradition of alleged hacker Martin Brigson. He subsequently worked as special advisor to Fergus Williams, Liberal Democrat MP for Norwich South, and as campaign manager for Remain UK and People’s Vote. In 2018, he published a book on the state of British Politics, _Second Coming: the Long Wait for Democracy,_ which has won the Orwell Prize and The Guardian First Book Award. He and Williams live in Norfolk, where he is writing his second book.
> 
> **When were you happiest?**
> 
> Now, which is a callous thing to say during a pandemic, but I was supposed to be travelling to Chile this year to start working on my next book, and being forced to take a break instead has probably done me the world of good.
> 
> **What is your greatest fear?**
> 
> That the people I care about will see through my facade of being a decent person to be around.
> 
> **What is your earliest memory?**
> 
> Being taken to feed the ducks by my mum.
> 
> **What is the trait you most deplore in others?**
> 
> Lack of conviction.
> 
> **What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?**
> 
> Disregarding other people’s feelings.
> 
> **Property aside, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought?**
> 
> Moving out of London has meant I’ve had to buy a more practical car. It’s a hybrid.
> 
> **What is your most treasured possession?**
> 
> I was bought a signed copy of the script of _All the President’s Men_ for my last birthday. It was a bit of an in-joke, but if the house were on fire, it’s one of the few things I would save. That and the dog, obviously.
> 
> **What makes you unhappy?**
> 
> Having to live with the consequences of my actions.
> 
> **What is your most unappealing habit?**
> 
> Pettiness.
> 
> **What is your favourite word?**
> 
> Recalcitrant.
> 
> **What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?**
> 
> Something egotistical, like Julius Caesar or Mussolini.
> 
> **Is it better to give or to receive?**
> 
> I’ve found there to be benefits to both.
> 
> **What is your guilty pleasure?**
> 
> Listening to the cricket in the bath with a glass of wine.
> 
> **When did you last cry and why?**
> 
> Watching _Ice Cold in Alex_. I can’t watch a decent war film, without it bringing a tear to my eye.
> 
> **How do you relax?**
> 
> These days, there’s nothing to do but relax, which can get a bit trying. I find a walk along the beach helps, followed by a good meal and a decent conversation.
> 
> **What is the closest you’ve come to death?**
> 
> When I was five, I fell out of a boat off the Isle of Wight; luckily, I was fished out again.
> 
> **What single thing would improve the quality of your life?**
> 
> To be able to overindulge without feeling the after effects.
> 
> **What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?**
> 
> I’m pretty proud of the book.
> 
> **How would you like to be remembered?**
> 
> Fondly.
> 
> **What is the most important lesson life has taught you?**
> 
> That there’s a reason the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the US Constitution. It’s taken a while but, this year, I’m finally doing my best to pursue it.

Fergus has a scrapbook, now, and Adam mocks him for it relentlessly. He claims it has some sort of strategic purpose, but given that his working life consists of the odd spot of remote consultancy work and Adam’s still knee deep in research for the elusive second book, he acknowledges this as a tenuous argument. He’s just finished adding another newspaper clipping to it, a throw-away interview with the _Guardian_ magazine, when Adam surprises him, slipping up behind him to insinuate cold hands under the collar of his shirt.

“Fucker,” Fergus gasps, knocking his hands away. “What the fuck have you been doing, building a fucking igloo?”

“Took George for a walk. There’s a cold wind on the beach.” Adam tucks his face into the curve of Fergus’ neck. “Suppose you’ll just have to warm me up.”

Fergus makes a half-hearted attempt to push him away. “You should be so fucking lucky. I’ve got a Zoom thing with Rachel in half an hour.”

Fergus feels Adam grin against his skin. “Pretty sure you’re up to the challenge.” ****

Stumbling to the bedroom with Adam’s hands beneath his shirt is familiar enough, now, that they make it without incident. They don’t bother shutting the curtains, because there are no other houses between them and the wide sweep of the coastline, and if someone happened to be walking on the beach and caught an eyeful, they’d have to be in possession of superhuman eyesight or a pair of binoculars. Adam likes to think they’ve scandalised a bird-watcher or two.

Adam is in an odd mood, apparently, because when Fergus attempts to pull him down onto the bed, he stops him, pushes him onto his back and starts methodically removing Fergus’ clothes for him, starting with his socked feet and continuing until he’s lifting his hips to allow Adam to push his jeans off his hips and down towards his ankles.

Fergus has never been embarrassed by his body, usually too turned on or pleasantly sated to worry about such things in front of Adam, but Adam had been planning to do the marathon in April, had it not been cancelled, and the training has left him lean and strong in a way that makes Fergus’ stomach do somersaults every time Adam peels off his t-shirt. He’s been making surreptitious attempts to keep his own shirt on, lately, when they’re in bed, hoping that Adam will be too distracted by Fergus’ lips around his cock to notice, but as Adam reaches for the buttons and Fergus attempts to send his hands towards his crotch to head him off, Adam lets out an amused puff of air against the skin on the inside of his knee. “Would you fucking stop it? You’re perfect, you idiot.”

Fergus undergoes a silent battle between mortification, anger and bashful delight. “Fuck off.”

Adam resumes his journey up the inside of Fergus’ thigh. “Eye of the beholder, and all that.”

Much to Fergus’ disapproval, Adam bypasses his cock and presses his mouth to the skin at the hollow of his hip, and Fergus can feel him smiling. He pushes at Adam’s shoulder. “What?”

“Been a year since we moved,” Adam says, into the soft, warm skin beside his navel. He glances up at Fergus swiftly as though to check Fergus doesn’t think him foolish for marking it.

Fergus’s fingers find the back of his head. “Soppy twat. Come here.”

It hasn’t been an easy year, not least because Adam hasn’t seen his parents since lockdown began, and despite his insistence that he probably wouldn’t have seen them in the last six months, anyway, left to his own devices, Fergus has overheard the concern in his voice when he rings his mum to tell her she ought to be getting the shopping delivered rather than going to the shops, and to check whether his dad’s obeying his shielding letter.

It’s taken time to adjust to leaving London. It’s taken time for the pair of them to learn to navigate each other’s moods and idiosyncrasies, now that they’re in one another’s company for so much of the day, but in truth, most of the heavy-lifting had been done on that front during the couple of months after Adam sold his flat and moved into the house in Camberwell. Maybe it had been done years before and all of the time dancing around one another had been leading up to this, being able to spend as much time in one another’s company as they want, without having to dissemble. That had been the greatest relief, in the end: no longer having to fuck about making up excuses to stay for a bit longer, for another drink, another hour, until one of them gave in and called a cab to avoid having to address why neither of them wanted to be the one to ask the other to stay.

Adam crawls up Fergus’ body to let Fergus kiss him, allows Fergus to divest him of the rest of his clothes, and eventually takes the pair of them in his hand, one of Fergus’ ankles hooked insistently over his calf. When Fergus’ phone sounds, somewhere below them in the room he’s claimed as an office, it's easy to let it ring.


End file.
